


Mirror Matter

by anstaar



Series: death’s champion (the line between good and evil) [2]
Category: Doctor Who & Related Fandoms, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Childhood Friends, Complicated Relationships, Dimension Travel, Gallifreyan Fairy Tales, Mirror Universe, Multi, Role Reversal, Time Lord (lack of) Child Rearing as important backstory, Time Lord Morality, alternate universe relationship drama, beautiful fall foliage, forces of chaos and order (and other bad poetry by the Master), harm to children in backstory, ignoring horror movie aesthetics, meeting your evil self, the problem with a lack of facial hair
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-27
Updated: 2020-03-24
Packaged: 2021-02-28 05:00:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 12
Words: 41,397
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22918114
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anstaar/pseuds/anstaar
Summary: When the Master detects strange energy coming from Earth, he sets out to find the source with the help of his faithful companions. When the Doctor's TARDIS is thrown off course, she sets out to find the cause. Neither of them expect who they find, and that's just the start of the problem.(diverges from canon after Praxeus)
Relationships: The Doctor & The Master (Doctor Who), The Doctor/The Master (Doctor Who)
Series: death’s champion (the line between good and evil) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647238
Comments: 24
Kudos: 57





	1. cold open

**Author's Note:**

> the true purpose of this series is to write the story about the Master & Jo's adventures in not-satanism in the '70s (less so the '80s), but until I finish that one here's an adventure in one of my favorite tropes as inspired by an idea from a pretty terrible Big Finish Audio

“Are you sure we should be doing this?” Jack asks, rubbing her hands together. She’d decided the day was warm enough that she wouldn’t need gloves, but that had been at the dorm door when she’d had a class to get to and the sun was there behind the clouds. Nightfall had been a sharp reminder that February isn’t quite spring. 

Digby sends her a grateful look, partly illuminated in the play of the light from their phones. He doesn’t want to be here. The only thing he wants less is to be the first to admit it. If Digby had chosen their activity, it probably would’ve been a party over at one of the soccer houses. Or whatever sport goes on in February. Soccer seems like a possibility. Jack had gone to a soccer game her first semester in order to prove willing, she thinks that covers any and all obligations to paying attention to college sports. Wandering the campus after dark, completely sober, with two other people, is not Digby’s idea of a good night. Admittedly, it’s not Jack’s idea of a good night, either. 

“I told you, I have the keys,” Jill, the reason they’d dragged themselves out for this hike, says, turning with a smile. She has a nice smile. She also usually has a more reasonable definition of fun.

“You said, I missed the connection, somewhere.”

“If we weren’t supposed to go in, then I wouldn’t have the key.” Jill flourishes the card. She looks so satisfied that Jack doesn’t want to point out there are still a few missing steps. Jill has a key to the public health building because, well, Jill just ends up with that sort of thing. That doesn’t mean she’s supposed to use it to bring friends in afterhours. Even if it seems reasonable when _she_ says it. 

Jack shivers. She isn’t often down at this end of campus. The buildings are newer, but somehow slightly creepier in the dark. Maybe it’s the glass. It feels like some sort of alarm should be going off. It’s stupid. Students are in and out of other buildings far later, but it reminds Jack of late nights at high school, wrong however much authorization the clubs had. Just a stupid bit of over imagination. The worst that could happen is maybe a campus cop shows up to be overly officious in acknowledgement of their complete lack of any real power. 

Jill takes Jack’s hand, rubbing warmth back into it now they’re out of the chill. “You should remember your gloves. And don’t worry. We could come back tomorrow, but I just had to show you this. I knew you’d love it.” Digby coughs. “And Digby is tall enough to get it down.”

“Good to know I’m wanted,” he says, dryly. She almost likes him when he’s like this. 

Jill laughs, reaching over to pat his arm. “You mean you don’t want to be the first person who I think of when I need a bit of muscle?”

“If you phrase it as needing a _lot_ of muscle, it could be acceptable.” Digby might be trying to pose.

“Then people would think I meant Alice, or maybe Mark.” Jill hasn’t let go of her hand. The warmth makes walking through the needlessly twisting corridors of the building seem fun, like some sort of adventure. 

Jack had always had enough friends that she hadn’t had to sit alone or worry about having to go somewhere alone. But ever since the day Jill had hugged her and then asked if she thought that someone in the housing department was under the false impression that they had a sense of humor, she’d had something more. She’s had plenty of crushes, a best friend is rarer. 

“This whatever better live up to your hype, after I almost died on the icy tundra to get here.” 

“A completely accurate retelling of events,” Digby mutters.

Jill pulls ahead, before Jack can decide whether to reply, zeroing in on one of the unmarked doors. “It would be worth a tundra twice as icy, I promise.”

“A big claim for something in storage in the public health department.” Jack tries to remain slightly sarcastic, but it’s strangely difficult. Jill’s excitement is infectious, this whole adventure thrilling. Even though she can’t imagine the ‘whatever’ Jill has been dancing around defining but has made clear is just something in a box is going to be that dramatic. 

Breaking into buildings in the middle of the night, strange treasure quests – ignoring the bit of discomfort, it’s more her speed than most parties. In this company, anyway. 

“So, what is it? This mind blowing smaller-than-a-breadbox.” Jack asks, as Digby, with a few dramatic sighs, starts moving things aside so he can lift down the black box he’d been pointed towards.

Jill smiles again, eyes almost seeming to glow. “Time.”

* * *

“Earth, in the early 21st century. A small college town in New England, slowly emerging from winter into a new spring. Suddenly home to a strange energy signal that does not _belong_.” The Master spins on his heel, sweeping the console room with a dramatic, steely-eyed gaze. 

Even in his own mind, he can’t say the recipients seem particularly impressed. 

Max looks excited, but Max always looks excited. The day Max isn’t enthusiastic to see something is the day it turns out he’s been replaced by a rather rubbish robot duplicate, one that had practically give up out of exhaustion without even a real attempt at trying to claim to be the genuine article, once they’d found their way into the mine and found that Max _still_ had a spring in his step. Max being impressed is a reassuring constant of the universe, but not worthy food for the ego. 

Leo is looking something up on his phone or pretending to look something up as an excuse not to make eye contact. It’s hard to tell. Nida can broadcast that she’s _only just_ not rolling her eyes with impressive panache. He likes it better when she aims her weaponized skepticism at other people. 

“Again?”

“I see I don’t have to tell you to blend in, you’re already in character.” The sound of eyes not being rolled grows louder. 

“When are we not following weird energy readings, usually on Earth in the 21st century. Don’t start, Leo.” She huffs slightly, flipping a few strands of hair out of her face with what he knows is almost violent precision. 

Max is practically vibrating. “What sort of weird energy? What are we going to do? Is it dangerous?” 

“Not at all possibly or maybe a little. What we’ll do has yet to be determined. I believe a little investigation is in order. We’ll go in, find out if there have been any noticeable strange effects, and take it from there.” Which, yes, is basically the same as always when he finds an unknown reading, but that doesn’t mean the plan isn’t worth repeating. Anyway, Max likes to play out the ritual before dashing off to ‘get ready’, dragging Leo after him to make sure they’re ready for landing. 

* * *

Nida shakes her head. “You know that kid looks up to you. You’re his role model.” The Master raises an eyebrow. He’s good at raising eyebrows, practically always is. It’s something to be shown off. Nida shakes her head again, unimpressed. “He’s learned this by watching you.” 

He follows her pointed, almost pained, look to where Max is standing, checking the readings on the screens carefully. He’d found a t-shirt with the not entirely likely claim ‘Recycling is Punk Rock’ printed across the chest to go with cargo shorts. His hands are stuck in the pockets of his usual vest. 

Nida has an unreasonable opposition to vests. Unfortunately, like most humans, she doesn’t receive constructive advice with any grace. The Master could list hundreds of times he’s saved his friends, and the world, with the contents of his vest, and she’d still grab a jacket that barely has pockets – and then complain about the lack of pockets. Humans. Not that he _would_ offer such a list, as he doesn’t have to justify his objectively better fashion sense to anyone (especially not someone who wears the same shirt everyday of a regeneration). 

“It’s safe to go out!” Max announces, waving at the door. The Master suspects it’s supposed to be a sweeping, dramatic gesture. Well, the kid could have worse role models.

Overall, their group blends better with small college campus than some of the Master’s former companions would’ve managed. They’re about the right age, for one, but they’re also good at finding ways in. Max is consumed by a group playing frisbee so seamlessly that even they have probably forgotten that he wasn’t always there. Nida acquires a group of admirers and is no doubt learning of every social event of any note. Leo’s vanished in the direction of a computer, away from people, but it’s about knowing your strengths. 

He admits readily enough to a fondness for soldiers. They’re good at following shouted orders during a crisis and running and, some at least, making tea. Of course, they tend not to continue the soldiering life after they’ve gotten a chance to see so much more with him, but it’s a useful starting point. He disapproves of military forces using children, but while he’d made sure the paramilitary force had been disbanded with some prejudice, his current companions had gotten one or two things from their experience. Psychological trauma, probably, to start with. Lack of respect for authority, too, which he’s almost sure is a side they hadn’t shown to Missy. Still, the enthusiasm is nice. 

The Master strolls across the campus, checking the readings every so often to see if there’s a direction. There’s a certain swirling feeling, but he knows better than to assume that’s necessarily radiating outwards from an object. He could be getting echoes of what’s not there, or what will be there, or some interesting other option. He loves weird energy readings, it’s like getting a surprise present. Including the bit where he figures out what the surprise is ten minutes before the reveal and can decide whether to pretend to be impressed or not. 

A time machine is grand for a connoisseur of the strange and unexplained, but the usual mysteries tend to have quite straightforward answers when you actually get there: natural phenomena, prejudices shaping assumptions, a sensibly planned tunnel, aliens trying to conquer the Earth… They’re often really not anywhere near as dramatic and ‘impossible’ as people like to go on about. Strange energy readings are the spice of life. 

He pauses, considering whether he should take the school newspaper with him or not. There’s nothing of use in it, but keeping souvenirs doesn’t give off ‘serial killer vibes’, which is just a rude thing to say about another person’s home and collection of interesting items, which don’t require justifying to the sort of person who probably believes in burning their own possessions for fun _and_ is a known spaceship-spotter with an anorak. 

As is so often the case, his mental debate is interrupted by screaming. Really, it’s more useful than keeping a coin around to toss for when he’s faced with the problem of dealing with one of the only people able to keep up in a match of wits (himself, obviously, except for when he crosses his own time stream, which tends to leads to far less worthy opponents). And it’s coming from just the direction he’d decided the strange energy readings were likely radiating. 

The Master rolls up the paper and tucks it into a pocket. Oh, he is _good_. 

* * *

“Look at those leaves,” the Doctor says, pushing the TARDIS door open wide and striding out confidently, “Takes your breath away. Literally, in some cases. There was this one time when the Yuthitians set down to invade, but they didn’t realize that a different planet environment could hold more dangers than getting a bit of a sniffle. Next thing you know, there’s calls coming from Western Maine about grey blobs with giant eyes lying flat out under the trees. Not a _lot_ of calls, mind you –” 

Graham looks at Ryan who looks at Yaz who tries to decide if she should say something before Graham decides to take a plunge. None of them know what set the Doctor onto the idea of a nature tour, a _leaf viewing_ nature tour in the first place. It might be possible to trace it back to some tenuous link in the complaints about covering the world in plastics, but there’s no point in trying to follow the logic. 

Yaz doesn’t think that it featured in any of their lists of places to go when you can go anywhere in time and space, but the Doctor had been so enthusiastic about the idea that none of them would’ve suggested maybe somewhere more interesting. The way the Doctor can tuck emotions away – well, going along with strange urges feels like the least they can do. 

Somehow, it makes the distinct lack of colorful leaves more of a let down than if the Doctor had promised an epic alien planet. Yaz isn’t personally disappointed that they’ve landed by trees without leaves, with a breeze that suggests spring is coming more than autumn, but the Doctor’s crestfallen expression makes her feel almost guilty that faint sounds suggest they haven’t landed far away from any human civilization (probably human). 

“Bad luck, Doc,” Graham says, going for something like ‘heartily cheerful’. “Where have we landed?” Yaz gives a mental shrug, sometimes that works. 

“It is _not_ bad luck, Graham,” the Doctor announces, glaring at a tree before stalking back into the TARDIS. Sometimes it doesn’t work. Though the Doctor seems unusually upset, usually there would be something to distract her attention (or perhaps that is there would be an attempt to distract their attention). Maybe this really is about something deeper, one of the things the Doctor refuses to talk about by talking about everything else instead. 

“So, we’re a bit off course, it’s happened before.” Graham is good at stubborn, but this time the Doctor remains distracted – or undistracted. 

“We aren’t off course; everything was exactly right. Something happened, and it wasn’t me. I don’t like it when something happens that wasn’t me when I’m flying. The TARDIS doesn’t like it. Nobody likes it. It’s very unlikable. Ha! See there?”

Despite knowing exactly what she’ll see, Yaz joins Graham and Ryan by the Doctor. “See what, Doctor?” She asks. It’s Ryan’s turn to ask that next time. 

The Doctor starts pointing and incomprehensible readings, accompanied by a speech that could either be understood only by the most advanced physicists, or is complete nonsense. 

“What does that mean, then?” Ryan asks, on cue. You learn to spot the gaps where the question is supposed to go. 

The Doctor flashes one of her bright smiles, bad mood apparently cleared away. “It means that we have a mystery to investigate!”

At least that sounds more interesting than looking at leaves.


	2. eyeline match

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it’s still impressive, even now that they know the words ‘hardcore Mary Poppins cosplay’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> warning for implied harm to children in backstories and spiders

Max is pretty good with people. That sounds like boasting, and he’s not trying to. O boasts all the time, but he always says it’s just pointing out areas where he’s impressive in case someone might have missed them and so won’t properly be able to appreciate the end result, because they understand a bit more how it would be unexpected, from someone else. So, if Max finally managed to beat Leo at, by this point, literally any video game or if Nida said he did well in combat training, _then_ he would have reason to boast a lot about managing to get close to maybe impressing his friends. The people thing is different. 

Max likes people. He’s not stupid. He knows that not everyone can be trusted and that there are bad people out there who like hurting people. But it’s not stupid to look for the best instead. If you offer a chance for them to help, a lot of people will take it. Just because people who _like_ claiming to be the bad guy are loud, it doesn’t mean that there’s lots of them. Even in the people he doesn’t trust, he’s pretty sure that most of them still would like to think they’re the ones in the right. 

Nida is a lot more defensive. Nida is good with people, in a different way. People are attracted to her, because of her looks, and her confidence and sometimes even the sweetness she usually only pulls out to cover the delivery of a sharpest cut. Back home, Nida set herself up as the top of social hierarchies because that gives her control over how she takes the attraction. If she’s in charge, people can’t leave her as her family had. It had meant she could offer some protection to her team, her loyalty unbreakable when it was given (which is another reason she had a hard time with people who didn’t hold the same way), when they were always in danger. That had before, of course, when they were younger. Before Missy had come. 

Max remembers that night. The bunker air had felt even staler than usual. The kids had all been grouped together in one room, some of the older ones standing in front of the door like they’d be able to do much. They’d all heard the shouts and dull buzzing. They all felt the weight of the silence full fear over who had won. None of them had any illusions. And then the door had slammed open and _she_ had been in the door. 

The plum skirt suit. The puff of the shoulders. The impressive umbrella. The accent. All nothing like he’d ever seen or heard before. He thinks that nothing like her had ever existed before on their little colony. She had a sense of presence so large that it had taken a few moments to notice Nida standing behind her, grinning like he hadn’t seen in ages. As Nida says, it’s still impressive, even now that they know the words ‘hardcore Mary Poppins cosplay’. Missy had brushed away fears, had kids putting down weapons with a look and stern comments about explaining to everyone about acceptable recruitment policies. Max was certain she’d winked at him when she’d said something about disapproving of the aesthetics of small arms. Though after Leo had explained what the soldiers were planning, she had gotten very serious. She stopped them.

And then she left. 

Not immediately, of course. Missy had helped open up the last of the files and contacted people to help and seen most of the kids settled with a system set up to check on everyone that had worked well over the years. But she’d still left, of course. The universe was waiting for her, and there’s always more for her to do and see. They’d understood that, but for Nida, it had still been someone else leaving, as much as she tried to pretend otherwise. That’s why she tends to be prickly with O, even as she’d grown more certain of herself and less defensive in general in the time between seeing Missy’s umbrella vanish into a pillar and O coming through a skylight to land on stage with a bow. 

Max knows Nida very well, so he doesn’t have to show his work to know how she’ll most likely react to people, depending on what they want or what they say is important to them. He knows what she thinks, what she cares about, what old shadows still can obscure the present. But with people he doesn’t know as deeply, well, that’s why you talk to them so you can start to understand. Being able to guess motivations isn’t magic, it’s just listening. 

It’s also not a sign of lowkey psychic powers manifesting. O has checked, multiple times. Probably more times than he’s even admitted. Max thinks O has some hang-ups about understanding people, quite a few that appear rooted in what Nida and Leo both agree sounds like a kind of messed up planet, but he doesn’t say that because he doesn’t want another round of being asked what shape is on the card Leo’s looking at, from the alien who _does_ have psychic powers. 

O is good at motivations, but his social skills sometimes remind Max of Nida. If he’s not playing a role then he has to be Impressive, complete with capital letter. He has to be in control. He has to know more, setting up the pins by pretending to know less. He’s a good person, who doesn’t like that sort of compliment. And he’s very lonely. Its why Max had voted to go with him, after the mess with the attempted mind control had been sorted out. Traveling the universe is completely awesome, and getting to meet strange people and help them is the best part, but before he’d really known all that, Max just hadn’t wanted him to be alone, even when the memory of Missy had still been there to make things a little odd. 

That’s why, despite the danger, despite everything, he drops the frisbee game as soon as he catches a glimpse of that familiar blonde haircut.

* * *

Screaming is a good way to attract attention. The Master approves of screaming, it’s a versatile sort of sound. A scream can let you know that monsters are attacking or that a body has been found or that President Springsteen’s last album is available or that perfectly innocent aliens are being faced by intolerant xenophobia that could lead to completely unnecessary pain and bloodshed. 

Okay, so screaming isn’t always the best way to convey information. But, to be honest, humans who offer up some longer verbal explanation are usually completely wrong about what’s going on so aren’t really of more use. In fact, they’re often of less use, because they’ve fixated on some nonsense that they will help make the world remain in their limited definitions of ‘what’s possible’. To be fair, humans are far from the only species with that particular problem. Species that can’t be relied upon to transform the extraordinary into something that fits their world view are extremely rare and should be treasured for their uniqueness. But a scream is a sign that there might still be some time before the internal perception filters start kicking fully into gear.

At this timber, a scream can also be a sign that someone’s experiencing the type distress that could be fatal if unaddressed, so it’s a good thing that the Master can think of an endless number of plans, as many counterplans and do a quick review of human biology all at the same time and while moving very quickly. 

The Master doesn’t even stop to make sure his hair hasn’t done anything stupid before entering the building, which, considering that it looks like the screaming is for nothing, is a sacrifice he hopes is appreciated. Yes, there are giant spiders made of bone scuttling across the floor but, by his guess, the boy in the polo shirt, who at least looks appropriately impressed at the Master’s punting the one going for him, probably spent hours complaining about the lack of Ice Spiders on Game of Thrones. 

Bone spiders are well and good, but he would’ve thought it’d have taken a little more to shock the jaded youth with their special effects and irony. Nida would’ve taken a herd (what’s the technical name for a collection of spiders?) of them out with a heeled shoe. For a woman who doesn’t wear high heels, she’s proved quite often why they can come in handy as an accessory. Going to a more precise analogy, Val had been a college student from about this time, and blood dripping from the walls hadn’t stopped her from knocking the Doctor out with a spectacular throw of the 2438 edition of _Orientalism_ , as updated by the clone Edward Said, with all those pictures. Seeing a screaming girl make another swipe with a textbook, well, sometimes it’s too easy to remember old friends.

The _point_ is that he would usually have to suppress the part of him that would want to shake his head at the sight of this sort of panic, the judgment of other’s control that he’s aware is not necessarily fair, especially to species that can’t control their biorhythms the way he can, so tries not to let affect his reactions. But he doesn’t feel even a trace of that usual touch of superiority. 

Objectively, this is far from the worse scene he’s walked into. There’s a boy sporting some scratches, but while the bones that make up the spiders legs (and how does he know they’re spiders, why is that the word that comes to mind when there are species that are far more similar in appearance) are sharp and he doesn’t doubt their intentions, they’ve been held off by the completely uncoordinated actions of a few college students and fly pleasingly far when addressed by a good kick. Even if they look to be repairing themselves after the daze of being shattered against a hard object. As for the walls weeping blood. Well, that should just look a bit naff. But it doesn’t. None of the stupid should-be-on-Halloween melodrama of it makes him want to laugh or roll his eyes. 

He’s not scared, but he can feel the echo of the fear that’s irradiating this place. A fear that sounds almost familiar, aimed at a beat human hearts can’t match. And underneath the metallic taste of blood, he has come close enough now to the strange energy that the air has taken on a purple-green flavor.

Even after all these centuries, signs of home are unmistakable.

* * *

Traveling with the Doctor is… an experience. Which sounds daft, even inside Ryan’s head, but if he tries to find a better comparison, he’s in danger of ending up with extended metaphors and babbling on almost like the Doctor. Somedays you’re fighting monsters on the other side of the galaxy, somedays you’re at home, finding there are monsters lurking under your own sofa. Which could get pretty alarming, if you dwell on it too much. It’s better to follow the Doctor’s lead, where it’s safe even in the midst of danger and no dwellings allowed. At least, not allowed to show on your face. Keep moving, that’s the key. 

The Doctor had moved onto a whole lecture about college tuition and the history of institutions – if you could _call_ an average of sixty or seventy years a ‘history’, not that she’s one for being a snob about what’s old or not, as when you travel in time basically everything was built just yesterday and a thousand years ago all at once so she’s not saying anything _but_ when the ‘new’ side of campus is just a difference of five years, what are you talking about, eh? Plus there had been a fair bit of muttering about the pointlessness of exams in judging where you’d be a couple thousand years later and people who had triple firsts, which had then led to her loudly announcing that there’s a strange energy reading that needs investigating. Yaz had gone after her, to watch her back and make sure someone was there to stop her from taking apart anything too important, and Ryan and Graham had split up to look for any of the ‘unusual signs’ that had cropped up in the rambling. 

So far, Ryan’s investigations have led to him being sat at a table with a group of students who are happy to talk and, so far, have shown no interest in trying to kill him. Not literally, anyway, the gaming marathon sounds pretty cool. The bit of confusion over big YouTube names was easily skated over by invoking Sheffield. 

“Is there some sort of international student day?” One of the students – Brian, international studies, as he’d introduced himself – asks. Maya – computer science – raises her eyebrows at him and he blushes, again. “What? There were those Canadians asking around earlier, we usually don’t have that many potential students showing up at this time of year.”

“He wants to be a tour guide,” Maya says, with a hint of a smirk, “So he would know. Do they give out statistics?”

“I don’t want to be tour guide. Though there would be nothing wrong if I did.”

Lacy – also computer science – leans towards Ryan a bit, definitely a touch flirting there, “He can’t talk about sex parties without blushing, so he can’t pass the test.”

“What’s that?” A familiar voice asks from behind Ryan’s chair, a hand landing on his shoulder, as Brian blushes. Lacy seems unphased by Graham’s arrival, though Ryan feels oddly embarrassed, almost like he really is a student looking around whose just had his granddad show up. 

“We got a feature spot in a news segment about wild orgies at liberal colleges and all the other terrible things that your innocent child could be exposed to by degenerate intellectuals. We’re all very proud of it.” Lacey’s smile at Graham lacks any sort of flirting, which is another point in favor, something to think on if things don’t start exploding. “Hello, I’m Lacey, you must be Ryan’s granddad.”

“Or a tour bus has gone very wrong,” Simone – international studies _and_ computer science – says under her breath. 

“That’s me, Graham. It’s good to know you have a proper reputation, wouldn’t feel right to send Ryan off, otherwise.” Graham sits down in the space that’s quickly made for him, giving Ryan a look that’s probably trying to communicate some message, but just makes him look like he’s experience stomach troubles. 

“What’s that about Canadians?” Ryan asks, trying to move back to a different track. 

“There were three of them. I think they were Canadians, I’m not great with accents,” Brian admits, equally grateful to move to a different topic. 

“You talked with that girl for how long without finding out where she was even from?” Maya asks.

“Nida was talking to a lot of people, not just me. And she’s more interested in knowing about stuff here than tales from home. Wants to know if there’s anything doing, so she’s doomed for disappointment.” Now that could be promising, new arrivals with potential interest in the unusual – what did they want to go poking about for? He hopes Graham picks up on his silent communication more effectively than when he’d tried to transmit. 

“Where’s this girl now? Might pay off to talk with another visitor, work out all your secrets.” Graham can be so embarrassing, though Ryan swears that his companions seem almost charmed. No accounting for that. 

“She said something about meeting her brother at the library.”

“I can tell you now,” Simone adds, “The secret of where are all the books is that the library most just has computers. We could do with some more interesting secrets.” 

Ryan tries not to wince, even though that is just _begging_ for trouble.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time: a variety of unexpected meetings and (some of) the story of the master & the doctor (as learned by hanging out with someone who monologues)


	3. flashbacks

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> how to play nice with the locals

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> references to UNIT: Dominion; also some Classic Who serials, though ones that otherwise played out quite differently in this universe

**[A NUMBER OF REGENERATIONS AGO. BEFORE THE WAR.]**

“I can’t **believe** you hit me in the _face_ ,” The Master says, “With an _umbrella_. I’m still bleeding! We’re not like you humans, you know, getting a nosebleed at the brush of a feather. It takes a heavy hand to spill Time Lord blood.”

“Can we avoid talk that veers towards peons towards superior biology?” Klein asks from where she’s lying on the small sofa. She pulls at a few strands of singed hair, wincing at them or perhaps from the still healing cuts.

“Yes, I can see that would still be a sensitive subject. I mean, there _is_ an actual biological difference – ah, well, not better. Remember the courage of your convictions and so on. Consider the benefits of knowing… interesting pieces of information.” Klein closes her eyes; he suspects he was right when he thought that his pep talk hadn’t cheered her up much. Well, nothing to be done about it now. UNIT probably has people. 

The Master looks down the handkerchief in his hand. There’s a question mark on each corner. A handstitched into the material. Of course, they probably came that way. Just because he can imagine the Doctor hunched over a giant pile of handkerchiefs, making sure that each is clearly identified as his, doesn’t mean it’s accurate. He’d have gotten bored ages before he got to the second one, most likely. 

The Doctor hasn’t said or done much since he’d tossed the balled-up handkerchief at the Master’s face a few complaints ago. He’s just standing there, hands clasped around his umbrella handle, the Master likes to think in part that’s needed to resist the urge to go poking at the Master’s TARDIS. He hasn’t meddled with anything since they’d closed the doors. It’s getting _irritating_. Not that the Master has any trouble holding up both sides of a conversation himself, it’s often the best way to have intelligent discussion, it’s just… unsettling. Not like the Doctor. The Master had saved a little bit of energy specifically to fend off the Doctor’s likely attempts at ‘tinkering’ with his TARDIS and has endless witty comebacks to what would be the normal conversational gambits, and it’s for nothing. 

Besides, it’s been a good day. Not _perfect_ , maybe, but a peace has been established between two alien species, the Earth’s energy crises are solely of Earth origin and Sergeant Wilson had been in time to see his daughter being born. For some reason, Wilson had said that his wife was unlikely to go for any of the real good names the Master had suggested, something about maybe for a son and limited view of time (he hadn’t said that bit, but he didn’t have to), but the Master had meant his congratulations, anyway. Humans, they can sneak up on you. Emotionally. Physically, the boots had rather given the Sergeant away. 

He has lots of reasons to be pleased with himself, and with how things have gone. He still gets a little extra thrill at feeling pleased in the first place. The spring in his step, the pleasure in his hearts, the jaunty tune he might have whistled if it weren’t for certain objects having hit him in the face – he wouldn’t have felt any of that a regeneration ago. Everything had seemed to _serious_ then, nothing was fully _fun_. How incredibly dreary, he owes it to the universe to make up for it by feeling everything properly now. Of course, he has an excuse: pain can have a way of dragging everything down. He can still remember it. So maybe he shouldn’t count working (more or less) on the same side as the Doctor under reasons it’s been a good day. 

The thing is, he _likes_ working with the Doctor. He doesn’t like liking it, but Klein is distracted by her own problems and it feels a bit pathetic lying to himself when there hasn’t even been an accusation yet. The Doctor brilliant. It’s not just that he’s clever, if it were just that there are other people from school he could keep in touch with. No, the Doctor is _creatively_ brilliant, full of ideas that no one else would think of and getting them to _work_. He doesn’t just keep up with the Master, he compliments him, together they can create such marvels. And then he’ll do or say something that reminds the Master just why they don’t work together often, and the disappointment is still bitter, in a way it wouldn’t be if the Doctor was just an old friend who failed to be interesting instead of an enemy whose too often spectacular in all the wrong ways. 

The Master had thought he’d let go. Ahaha, ‘let go’, he’ll have to remember that one. A different time, the Doctor might find it funny. But the point is, the Master had made his choice. The universe instead of the Doctor, he’s made that choice over and over, but it couldn’t be starker than a body lying broken on the ground far below and a galaxy saved. And if that death had tied him closer instead of releasing him, then Sarn had been the bookend, the moment the Doctor had turned at left the Master with the rest of the dead serving as a knife that had severed that link and cut into other connections that neither of them liked to acknowledge. The Doctor is like a star, like mercury, like a black hole – deadly by nature if you get too close. The burns had been there to remind him. They were both free of the dangerous dance that had grown to be more of a compulsion than any sort of joy. Then he’d seen the figure arguing with the giant floating head and known that had just been one of his better constructed lies. And now the Doctor is standing in his TARDIS, with an expression that suggests he’s thinking of something millions of miles away. 

“You can tell me, it was a blow against my good looks, wasn’t it?” He says, moving closer. “You don’t look good. Not that you could measure up on your _best_ day, if we can speak Time Lord to Time Lord, but this is pushing an envelope. People will start whispering that we drag sick men into battle. The amount of dramatic irony in that would be simply intolerable, soldieries would desert in droves, unable to put up with it.” The Doctor truly does look exhausted, worse than Klein and with none of the excused of humanity. The Master isn’t _worried_ , but now he thinks about it, he wonders. The energy draining business hadn’t been that bad, really, and they’d worked together as impressively as always. He hadn’t really registered how grey the Doctor looks until now. 

“What you said to Klein was a bit cruel,” he moves even closer, circling the Doctor slightly. 

That at least, finally, gets a response, however half-hearted. “Does that surprise you?” The expected words, even if the tone is too blank. He doesn’t even do the eyebrow raising thing the Master can tell he loves in this body. 

“Not _especially_ , Doctor, though there’s always hope.” There is always hope, but it had been a strange type of cruelty for the Doctor. There’s the reshuffling of regeneration, but even when the degrees change, the Master is (still, overly) attuned to the Doctor’s patterns. The unthinking insults are common (and understandable, the Master might mostly try to be _good_ , but he is a Time Lord), but deep cuts are generally reserved for when he has a plan (or when he’s fighting with the Master, but there are some arguments where neither side comes out looking well if you only look at the words). The revelation he’d ‘gifted’ Klein with doesn’t quite _fit_. 

The Doctor laughs at that. Well, the Master calls it a laugh because that’s what it’s clearly supposed to be, but it’s a rather horrible sound. The sort that would make a lesser person retreat. “Nothing’s infinite.”

There’s more life to his eyes, few people would call in an improvement. He takes his crumpled hat from a pocket, rolling it around his hands. “You found the deal tempting? A nice plot of carefully controlled land, ripe for shaping for a few years before leaving it to tick along in your image. A little piece of _master_ y. Michael Masterson, how creative.”

“Some of us know how to play nice with the locals.” The Master could ignore the old taunt, and the highly unnecessary ‘r’ rolling (and people say _he_ has a problem with emphasis), but it’s something to say. In this body, he always has something to say. He doesn’t know what to say about the accusation. The Doctor’s wrong, of course. Yes, there was something appealing in the offer, but there’s something appealing in a lot of terrible things, that doesn’t mean he’s truly _tempted_ by dictators or knock off custard creams. The point is action. If you ignore that, the Doctor could almost win the games for the rhetorical higher ground. But when the Master slips in those games, the Doctor has always just summoned a completely undeserved smugness. The dark weight behind the Doctor’s gaze makes the Master wonder for the first time just how long he’s worn this particular face. 

Going to talk with Klein isn’t running away, it’s just sensibly leaving the Doctor and his sarcastic comments about ‘locals’ without an audience. He doesn’t need the encouragement.

* * *

**[SEVERAL MONTHS AGO, RELATIVE TO THE PERSONAL TIME LINES OF MOST INVOLVED]**

The Master is quite proud of his slide show. Over the years, he’s developed it in perfect counterpoint to the various lectures he’s polished to a fine finish. And he likes wheeling in the ancient – from the perspective of the three humans – projector, the hum and click of it. It provides a better atmosphere then the computer, to have them sit together under the dimmed lights to watch it go. Admittedly, the 3-d projections aren’t entirely in line with the aesthetic, but he has a laser pointer and likes being able to walk around the images of the various dangers. Besides, they’ve never seen a slide projector before. 

The talk goes well. His three new companions are tired, the last few days have been draining both physically and emotionally, even young Max has stopped ending ever sentence with an exclamation mark, but they still follow his words. He has a few refresher courses in case anything slips by, but he thinks that they probably won’t need it. Useful to know, they’re going to find that they need to be able to keep on their feet, mentally, through long days. It’s important to learn these details quickly. The small detours into acceptable nicknames and, yes, he is using his impressive laser multitool as a pointer are also on the list of those matters better hashed out early on. 

Of course, they don’t need the lecture quite as much as those companions who come from before their culture has real space travel. He can basically skip over the Cybers. Max, unsurprisingly, had told him of his old dreams of being one of the heroic Glittermen who loom large in their colony’s legends. The Master suspects that Nida, at least, had shared those dreams, even if she scoffs now. Leo – well, he’s hard to make out. Maybe not. Not something to ask, not of him. His warning about the dangers of Daleks had been accepted, along with his (maybe a touch over calculated) comment that they were unlikely to run into many. Nida actually takes notes on various shape changing species and their obvious tells, while he can just tell Max is going to beg for the stories behind some of his mentioned meetings. It will be nice to have an appreciate audience around again. 

He’s moved the slides about basic Time Lord health to the first aid lecture, so the flip between the twenty-tentacled allihorns and a still image of the Doctor’s latest regeneration is slightly more extreme. He notes with approval that gazes remained fixed, and not skeptical, at the sight of a face that is less likely to register as obviously dangerous appearing on his ‘terrors of the galaxy’ slide show. His “the _reason_ you won’t find many Daleks about” introduction can be less impressive on those who have no idea what a Dalek is, but this time it seems to land. 

It all really has gone so well; he doesn’t know where it breaks down. It was probably because he let them poke around a bit earlier. The files give off the wrong impression if found first. Perhaps he went a _bit_ longer than he intended, but the Doctor can be hard to capture (as so many beings have found out, knowledge they often only get to hold for a brief period of time) and it’s important to thoroughly cover dangers. And, yes, perhaps he should’ve considered if he was letting any… emotion from their last meeting color the facts. 

Still, the looks he gets every time even the word ‘doctor’ is mentioned for the next few weeks is completely groundless.

* * *

**[NOW, AS MUCH AS THAT CAN BE DEFINED FOR TIME TRAVELERS]**

“We’re being followed,” the Doctor announces, as if that’s the natural follow-up to the story of how she had saves space Eurovision – not that it will be called that, obviously, as it’s in space, but it had been saved, and mostly by her. The Doctor has definitely been skipping from one topic to another far more than usual ever since they arrived, Yaz can’t decide if she should point that out or not. The obvious unease is unsettling against the relentlessly peaceful, or at least normal, surroundings, but it might be a better sign than the Doctor’s silence about other things. The disjointed nature of the Doctor’s conversation, or possibly monologue, helps Yaz stop herself from turning to try to figure out who the Doctor’s talking about. 

“Don’t look now,” the Doctor continues. “Good, you’re not looking. Brilliant job, that. Much better work than he deserves, to be honest, as he’s not doing a very good job at following us subtly. Good taste in t-shirts, terrible skills in skulking. You can look now, if you’d like.”

Yaz tries to make her turn look natural, as if she’s just pausing to take in the buildings. There isn’t much to take in, but people look at boring architecture all the time. Very naturalistic, unlike the potential spy. It’s immediately obvious who the Doctor’s talking about. She probably would’ve remembered the boy even if he wasn’t wearing an orange shirt under a vest. She wouldn’t call the shorts appropriate for the weather, either, but she’d seen a few students staunchly ignoring the chill wind of reality. He’d been playing frisbee, earlier. 

When he sees her looking at him, he freezes in place. The Doctor turns around too, which looks natural if you’re used to the Doctor’s sudden changes in direction, and he half-ducks, half-turns as if searching for cover and generally managing to look ridiculous. He starts patting the ground, possibly in a poor attempt to pretend to be searching for something, perhaps as a desperate attempt not to fall over completely. 

“He’s following us,” Yaz agrees. “Not very subtly.”

“That he is.” The Doctor says nodding. 

“That could be unusual.” 

“Perhaps, but then, I get followed all the time. For a start, I’m always turning and finding these three amazing people are right there. Actually, forget that, it was supposed to be a compliment, but now that I actually said it, it sounds weird and doesn’t acknowledge the more important points that really we’re walking together or I’m following _you_ and when I look back and get surprised it’s usually because I _don’t_ find one of you there, which is far more alarming, even though you’re brilliant and so I don’t need to be worried. But, generally, ignoring all that stuff I just said, I do get followed quite a bit. It makes sense. I’m usually going somewhere interesting. I’m very interesting myself, one of the more interesting people around on most planets. Besides being a well-known figure that’s always having to dark down allies and put on big sunglasses to avoid having to fight off autograph seekers, though that’s usually not in this area of time and space.”

“Do you think he’s connected to what happened to the TARDIS?” Sometimes you just have to patiently pursue a point. The Doctor seems certain enough that there has been some active interference, until she’d noticed Yaz’s alarm and done her best to look cheerful and unconcerned. Things shouldn’t interfere with the TARDIS. Not on purpose, anyway. Weird accidents are much less alarming than someone who can mess with a ship that’s traveling through time and space.

“Could by, Yaz, could be.” The Doctor’s brow furrows as she watches the boy’s desperate pantomime that’s seems to now involve muttering ‘glasses, glasses, glasses’ as if the chant will convince them that he had been wearing any. It’s hard to imagine that he’s dangerous. It’s pretty easy to imagine that he’s an alien. Yaz sometimes wonders at the fact that a great number of aliens appear to look almost completely human, except for their fashion choices. The Doctor has gone on about the great variation hidden by assumption of humanity and how the translation circuit can just make the confusion greater, but she’s failed to offer any actual explanation in response to the question. That’s true for quite a few questions, which is almost funny from someone who is so happy to share her extensive knowledge on ‘practically everything, really, if it’s important’. But the appearance of harmlessness can be deceptive. Yaz had known that even before she’d met the Doctor, but the Doctor has rather obscured all other examples. 

“Or he could be completely harmless, best to check.” The Doctor says cheerfully, marching towards the boy.

The boy falls back in the face of the Doctor in full steam ahead. He ends up sitting on the ground, staring up at them in what seems to be wide-eyed alarm.

“Alright, you, why are you following us? And why are you following us so badly? You could have just come up and said hello. Is it Yaz? She is very impressive, but I promise she’s not too intimidating when you get to know her. Very friendly really, our Yaz.” She smiles brightly at him. Yaz tries to offer a slightly more sympathetic smile.

“…Doctor?” The boy says, sounding confused. And slightly Canadian. Which, to be fair, is a reasonable state (including Canada, probably, it’s just that she’s gotten used to hearing aliens with weirdly familiar accents). 

“I am, indeed, the Doctor. You knowing that could be a good sign. Or it could be a bad sign. Or it could be a very bad sign. Or it could be an amusing mix-up in identities. There are multiple possibilities, is what I’m driving at here, possibilities that could be cleared up with some conversation. Or if you pull out an alien blaster and announce we have to come with you, but that’s a depressing possibility that I hope we can avoid.”

The kid keeps staring. If he does know the Doctor, it doesn’t look like he knew to be prepared to be hit with her at full force. He finally drags his gaze away from her to look at Yaz, expression managing to get even more confused, before his eyes flick back to the Doctor. The impression of expressiveness might be misleading, but she can’t help but think he looks like he’s trying desperately to hide his fear. 

“Talk! Talking is great. Talking without guns is super great. Awesome. Uh, there’s a good place to talk that way. I’ve heard.” His wave is in the opposite direction to where the Doctor had been leading them. “A talk with both of you…?” He looks at Yaz again, like she’s a potential safety rope that could turn out to be a snake at any moment but is still better than being alone with the Doctor. 

Something’s very wrong here.

* * *

“Something strange is happening here,” Graham says, as soon as they’re out of earshot. He has that weird look again, the one that had completely failed to explain anything to Ryan before. But if it’s really bad, there would’ve been no time for sitting around. If the Doctor or Yaz or someone needed them, Graham would’ve said immediately. 

“What? Of curse there’s something strange. That’s why we’re here. Unless the Doctor just doesn’t want to admit she accidentally landed in the wrong place.” 

Graham’s expression doesn’t lighten at Ryan’s smile. “No accident, son. Or maybe one of the biggest accidents possible. It’s bad. I think.” Ryan can’t shake his granddad out of his extremely strange and annoying bout of cryptic talk, but Graham seems to pick up on the message of getting to the point. “I think you should see for yourself. She’s not far.” 

“Who –” But he sees the Doctor before he finishes formulating his frustrated question. At first, he’s still not sure what Graham is talking about, or why he’s holding them back instead of going over. Yaz isn’t there, maybe she’s found something else to investigate. But the subconscious sense that there’s something far stranger with the picture starts growing louder as Ryan walks closer, Graham walking slowly behind him, and not in the usual way he walks more slowly. 

The Doctor’s sitting on one of the delicate wrought iron chairs, the rest of them are mostly abandoned, probably because they must be freezing out here. There’s a plate in front of her, covered by a muffin that looks like it’s been mauled more than eaten. It’s the Doctor, it’s obviously the Doctor. The shirt’s right, the jacket, the hair cut – but something’s off. 

Ryan has spent a large amount of time looking at the Doctor. Not in a weird way, she’s just where your eyes are drawn when you’re in the middle of a chaos of confusion and you need someone to explain the way forward. Or someone to give a speech to change people’s minds and get them to do the right thing (sometimes). Or those times he’s spent sitting in a dull cell, watching her pace back and forth because there’s not much else to do until they break out or are broken out. Are the suspenders a different color than usual? He’s pretty sure that game of ‘I spy’ had branded her outfit into his mind in exacting detail. It was better than taking part in the argument that had started up because the Doctor is the universes’ sorest loser and she’s not the only competitive one, and that’s two hours of his life gone for good with no explanation that doesn’t sound ridiculous. But it’s more than that. Something about _her_ , something missing. 

_Recognition_. 

He knows at least a bit about how well the Doctor can spot things. He and Graham aren’t even trying to avoid her. But there’s nothing. He hadn’t realized how much she can change, how much he’s gotten used to, until now, watching her stab at another chocolate chip.

Graham puts a hand on his shoulder again, and this time Ryan understands his look completely. “What’s happened? Where’s Yaz?” Taken? Erased? 

“I’m not sure, but I think she might be with the Doc.”

Time travel. “You think _she’s_ the Doctor from before we met her?” The idea is a relief. Nothing lost, just not gained yet. Graham doesn’t seem to share his relief. 

“Makes sense, doesn’t it? But the thing is, what do you think will happen if she meets the Doctor? Nothing good, I wager. A big boom, in fact.”

Ryan grins again, Graham’s worries can’t weight down the bubble of his relief. “Have you been reading time travel books again? She said it doesn’t work like that.”

“She’s said it _usually_ doesn’t work like the books. But she’s said plenty about paradoxes and I don’t fancy getting caught up in one.” 

“Sure. Yeah. Well we can just ring her up and tell her not to come this way. And that we might have figured out where things went weird.” A simple plan is better than a complicated one, fewer places to go wrong. Not _entirely_ without places where it can go wrong.

“Ring up who?” Asks a very familiar voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next update on Monday; with high chance that whatever thing will totally change everything forever won't feature, unless it has the potential to amuse me 
> 
> (random fact: during the dc!Master's eighth incarnation he tried to get his companions to do the Presidential Fitness Test; this was met with general protest of taking a theme too far)


	4. cable converter box

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'it just reinforces his impression that their relationship reminded him most of something like a train crash that had been caused by the train being hit by an airplane (possibly because crashing airplanes were on his mind, for some reason)'
> 
> or in which there are a couple of conversations, and very little communication

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a part of the last section comes from Big Finish Monthly Adventures #50: Master; that section also contains memories of violence; almost drowning; and the violent death of a child

Max has met the Doctor before. It was scary. Being tied to a chair. Meeting the Doctor. The bit where the airplane was on fire. O and the Doctor shouting at each other while the airplane was on fire. It was a long day full of very scary things. He has no trouble admitting that. It’s healthy to air appropriate fears. 

After Missy came and changed everything, there had been mandatory counseling. Max had found it very helpful. A lot of other people had found it less helpful, for a variety of reasons, most of which he can understand, but, personally, his counselor had helped him develop the tools to deal with the trauma he’d experienced, and with the dramatic changes in his life that weren’t necessarily easy to deal with even though they were positive. RADIcal Acceptance (he still doesn’t know what the acronym stands for) isn’t for everyone, and the number of people who had decided that a cult was the best alternative instead suggests a flaw in the system, but he’s used it a lot during his travels with O. It isn’t that the wonders make up for the terrors, it’s that both are part of a larger whole. 

The thing is, he had found it hard to be properly scared of the Doctor, before they met. It wasn’t because her picture looked more harmless than some of the others. Apart from strange outliers like Cybers or Daleks, most of the slides in the dangers of the universe are more _potential_ danger. There are facts that are important to keep in mind, but overall, there’s hope that you can make a positive connection with any sentient being, even as you have to remember what a failed conversation might lead to. A seven-foot-tall being that looked like it had scythes for hands might register as more alarming on his subconscious danger meter, but until he started traveling with O, the only people Max had associated with death and danger were human. That the Doctor looks human is plenty of reason to be nervous. No, it was that it was hard to think in terms of ‘entity of death and destruction’ when that’s tied to the name of someone O mentioned all the time. 

The two of them had ended up tied together in Max’s head, and _O_ isn’t scary. He can be dangerous, but that’s not the same thing. Max has known from the very start that O is dangerous. He remembers Missy. He watched O take down the whole cult with little more than a wave of his hand and a joke about how you shouldn’t join any cult unless he’s the leader. During the time they’ve traveled together, he’s seen that’s practically the least of it. He’s seen O turn back invasions, stop countless evil plans, and come strolling out of certain death with a whole new plan to save everything. His stories of his many past deeds aren’t boasting – okay, they are boasting, but they’re not _lies_ , and Max likes listening to them.

O is so much better than just a legendary hero, even though that bit is really cool. He teaches them how to set up a camp, and they spend three weeks on one of the most beautiful planets Max can imagine, sharing creepy ghost stories and flutily trying to convince O that the marshmallows are fine and they just want to eat them, not wait as he makes sure they’re ‘perfect’. He takes them to museums and manages to get away with making sometimes loud corrections. He rewrites sections in tourists’ guidebooks with the same pen he uses to do the crossword, always only in ink. He stopped the man who was trying to make fake pockets fashionable again in the 23rd century. He insists on watching cartoons, but only the ones with so little appeal to adults that they verge on actually painful. He pours milk into the bowl _before_ the cereal, and he doesn’t even eat cereal. He likes the sound of his own voice, 26th century null-gee bowling, and making the universe a better place. 

It was hard to think that someone he brought up all the time (even though he insisted he didn’t) as only a potential danger. It felt like knowing O meant knowing the Doctor, at least a bit. It’s like with Leo’s sort of evil, definitely a total jerk, ex-boyfriend. Max knows Leo too well to think of him as just the dangerous cult leader. 

Almost exactly like that, in that he couldn’t believe there isn’t something positive to find there, since O cares. And also, the part where trying to establish that they _were_ actually together involves mutters of it being complicated. 

“So, did you break up or what?” Nida had asked, when O had stopped in the middle of a story about a visit to the Traken Union with the brooding look they’d already learned meant that he had been reminded of the Doctor by something. Max had held his breath. Nida hadn’t even looked up from where she was painting his nails, because she doesn’t even actually care about the answer. 

“Saying ‘we broke up’ sounds overly juvenile,” O had said stiffly, “So I suppose that would be FULLY APPROPRIATE to SOMEONE,” and then he’d stamped out of the room.

“Stop moving,” Nida had told Max, poking him. She says this a lot when painting his nails, even though Max tries super hard to stay still, which especially difficult after dramatic revelations. 

“Is it juvenile to say that you broke up with someone?” He had asked her, because he’s not sure what the ‘adult’ term to replace that would be and, honestly, he trusts Nida’s judgment on this sort of thing more than O.

“I think he’s just being – stroppy.” 

“You forget,” Leo had said from where he was lying under the console, “Time Lords have far more advanced dating terminology than other species.” They probably wouldn’t have been able to stop from laughing at that, even if Leo hadn’t also managed to nail the tone just right. Max is pretty sure that O’s stated dislike for his home planet is genuine, but that doesn’t stop him from using them as a comparison any time he feels someone he dislikes is overly impressed with something – or when he wants to pretend not to care about something. 

Max didn’t hadn’t forgotten the Doctor was dangerous, but he hadn’t thought about scary. Then they had met. 

Max knows that the story got a bit jumbled up when he had first tried to explain what had happened. Partly because they had been running at the same time. Clarity is important, and he makes clear the second time around, it wasn’t the _Doctor_ who had tied him to the chair. She had more sort of inherited the situation. 

Up until he’d been captured, Max has to admit that he’d thought that the visit to 21st century Earth had been kind of cool, even though it was because people were being killed. Nida was still a bit grumpy from the whole ‘no, we’re not here for overthrowing governments this time, not even that one’ talk, with all its many graphic warnings about paradoxes, but finding out that O is a for real secret agent – sort of – and getting to hang out with real spies in general is the sort of thing she likes even more than he does. 

They had met some nice people from UNIT, who had cheered O up after his argument with ‘C’, which had started with how he’d _told_ C about the danger of shortsighted budgeting and continued on along the lines of does no one ever look at just how often dangerous alien incursions on Earth have just narrowly been prevented from turning into disasters and how he’d think that keeping a military force going would appeal, even if things like making sure they had a livable environment for the future was apparently too much work. When O starts, he tends to just keep going. But the UNIT people, or former UNIT people, had applied large amounts of tea, and that seemed to work. 

Max doesn’t like tea, and no one will let him drink coffee. That would be more annoying if he wasn’t pretty sure that he wouldn’t like coffee either. He doesn’t think that he gets kidnapped because he doesn’t like tea, but the type of person who goes on and on about how tea is a vital part of life – and he’s really not sure how he keeps meeting so many of them _traveling all over space and time_ \- might suggest there’s some corollary. After all, that was why he’d gone with Leo to meet up with his computer friends at a local café where he hoped to get some chocolate milk. Leo always manages to find computer friends, no matter where they end up, as long as its after computers are a thing, and they’re almost always the same kind of weird. Max generally likes them, but maybe he had been a little more frustrated at the comments on the milk thing than he’d thought, because another time he would have just shrugged off the over-acted pretense that he shouldn’t know why they find the search engine name so funny. So, he’d wandered off a bit. 

That isn’t to say that Max blames himself for being kidnapped. First of all, he places the blame firmly on the guy who thinks grabbing people and tying them to chairs for whatever nefarious purpose is a good idea. Has he ever suggested that the way to stop people who are trying to stop your evil plan is by kidnapping and threatening their friends? No, he had not, and the weight of responsibility isn’t on any of the people who are trying to prevent everyone from being eaten, or whatever was the exact plan. He had also made all reasonable precautions at the time, more than that, really, as they had been unaware that their faces had been recorded and tagged for following. It was much more reasonable to put his time and effort into trying to undo the ropes he was tied up with than in going over how he got there, as that’s not going to do anything to change the immediate past. 

His guard had been human, and Max likes to think that The Monologue was working to throw him off from his usual routine in the face of people tied in chairs, just a bit. There was more of a chance of it working than he would have had with a portal probably. Then the guard had been killed, and he has no way of knowing if there had been any chance at all. Death cuts off a lot of possibilities. O can know people out with just a touch, and without any of the many negative consequences he’s explained generally come with other physical ways of inducing unconsciousness. Maybe the Doctor just doesn’t have the same knack, but when he had looked at her expression, he hadn’t been able to come to any conclusion other than that she hadn’t thought about it at all. The guard had been alive and the he wasn’t and neither had mattered to her except in one state he had possibly been a mild inconvenience. 

O can treat death matter-of-factly. Sometimes, Max thinks that he’s a little too used to there being casualties, that he just assumes it automatically as part of most plans. When he’s focused on a goal, he’s not thrown off by people dying around him. He throws around comments about living for thousands of years and other species short lifetimes. But O _notices_. He cares. Max doesn’t always agree with how O talks about what’s acceptable in terms of the bigger picture – and O is willing to stop and listen. Because what the point of fixing things, what does it even _mean_ to claim that you’re fixing things, if people don’t matter. Max hadn’t truly realized what it meant that there’s someone like O who doesn’t listen to anyone. 

(Later, O had asked him how he had gone from one dead guard to all of that. Because there are moments when Max thinks there are darker underpinnings to the jokes about people who call themselves Lords of Time, that maybe knowing the Doctor tells you something about O, instead of the other way around.)

Admittedly, he hadn’t consciously articulated the full impact of that first impression until quite a bit later. In that moment, he had been more concerned with trying to figure out if he would be safer if he said that he knew O, or if there would be a whole new danger if he invoked the name of her (probable) ex.

“This isn’t what I was expecting to find here,” the Doctor said, seeming mildly quizzical. “I got the impression of something more dangerous. No offense. I’m not saying you’re _not_ dangerous, I don’t know you, I don’t want to make assumptions, but with that sort of talk, I would’ve thought that there’d have been more guards.” 

“I travel with O,” Max had admitted, hoping for the best and trying not to wonder how many guards there had been. “If there was talk about someone dangerous, it was probably about him.” 

“Who?” The Doctor had asked.

* * *

“Ohhh,” the Doctor had said, when they’d all been piled onto the plane, with Leo desperately trying to break through into the computer piloting the plane in front and Max cuffed to a seat and the Doctor casually standing in the aisle like this was all completely normal. Which, well, it wasn’t exactly _not_ normal, for them. “Now I get it. This one’s pretty bad, even for you.” 

“Funny, I was just thinking that this is _exactly_ the sort of bad I expect from you,” O had shot back, with one of his more impressive glares. 

The Doctor looked toward the ceiling of the plane, in what Max was sure was a completely affected gesture. “Here we go, I’d almost forgotten where fun goes to die. You, I mean. Not planes. Planes can be fun, if you’re the one flying them. Being stuck in the little seats is less fun. Still, you’re bringing down the whole plane.” 

“This is really the perfect time for a failed comedy routine?”

“ _O_ , I think it’s pretty amusing. If you go for a touch of the old physical comedy, which I do.”

“This is about Earth, not my name,” O had said, which was around the time things started to catch on fire. Which had both been very alarming, and had set off an alarm, though Max still isn’t sure if what he’d got of the rest of the argument had sounded disjointed because he had been only able to pick up bits of it or because they were both supplying at least ten levels of unspoken argument. 

Over Nida’s muttering about locks, he had heard the Doctor shouting something that sounded like, “MAKING A DIFFERENCE.”

O had roared back, managing to almost over come the alarm, “ALWAYS THE SAME DETRUCTION.”

“- _IMAGINATION_ -” 

“SETTING EVERYTHING ON FIRE ISN’T ‘IMAGINATION’.” Max still thinks that O’s ability to scream finger quotes was pretty impressive.

“BETTER THAN PRETENDING,” the Doctor had bellowed back, before she had dived through the portal that opened right in front of her. 

O had still been scowling when they had finally managed to land the plane, mostly in one piece. “That sort of thing is exactly why we broke up,” he’d muttered. Max had decided to take ‘that sort of thing’ to mean the murders, and potential murders, and not a reference for the fight over who could get the last word. O sorted out the strange aliens, though he glowers so much when reminded of it, Max still hasn’t found out what exactly. Or what the Doctor’s role had been. The lingering mood just reinforces his impression that their relationship reminded him most of something like a train crash that had been caused by the train being hit by an airplane (possibly because crashing airplanes were on his mind, for some reason). Maybe it’s the ones you care about who can hurt you the most, but that saying isn’t implying that they _should_.

“Okay, wait, so why do you think they should get back together then?” Nida had asked a few days later, once he’d managed a fuller version of his part of the story. She was painting Leo’s nails as, according to her, he was far more cooperative. “I get that Leo would be there for anything that makes his love life look better in comparison, but where did you come in?”

“I didn’t say they should get back together,” Max had said, again. “I said that I think that maybe they should try talking about their issues instead of screaming at each other on a crashing plane and then sulking around a TARDIS for ages. There are clearly things that they need to work out.”

“And I just said that might be one way to save a few lives. If the area around them is cleared.” Leo had put in, mildly. “Do you actually believe there wasn’t anything personal in her showing up to help take out those spies?”

“No. Because I’m not O. But that doesn’t provide any plan for getting them back together. To talk.” Which were two good points, even if Nida was overly sarcastic about their true intentions. Yes, Max worries about O being lonely, and he and the Doctor have known each other for a very long time. When he’s no longer facing imminent death, he even still believes there has to have been better moments than they saw. Besides, everyone needs someone to talk to. Even though they look human, they aren’t, and O, at least, doesn’t appear to be in contact with any other member of his species. From some things he has said, he might not be able to. That can’t be easy. Leo is just generally pragmatic. …Though Nida might have had another small point about comparative relationships.

* * *

Max’s not-really-a-plan, developed when he’d caught sight of that familiar coat, about maybe trying to talk to the Doctor to gauge if there might be a chance at communication had gone wrong – or gone weird, as ‘wrong’ might be better reserved for if there were dead bodies – pretty much immediately. It wasn’t _entirely_ not a plan. O has brought the doctor up less since they’d met, but there’s still plenty of information to draw from. 

Even Nida had agreed that O telling the students on the last planet they’d visited that ‘anarchism can be very attractive, until you look at the body count,’ held some deeper meaning. For one thing, it’s hard to believe that O has ever found _anarchism_ attractive. Max has never heard anyone call him antigovernment. It doesn’t not matter that the Doctor doesn’t appear to care about the price tag of death and suffering attached to change, in fact, that’s very important, but it’s something more promising than just wanting to be the universes most impressive serial killer or whatever. Maybe some would accuse Max of clinging too hard to the hope that she’s acting with some sort of motivation, one that might even something that could be appreciated if it was separated from… everything, but he thinks that the person his hope of being better is attached to is O, which isn’t too much to ask for. The two Time Lords have worked together in the past. Something had caused the most recent split – even if repeatedly getting together and then breaking up again sounds like what they’ve been doing for centuries, according to Jo Grant, though O claims that her version of ‘the Old Unit Days’ is skewed – and maybe O isn’t the only one who regrets the break. Maybe. 

He’d been fully aware that it wasn’t what could be called a _good_ plan, but at least it had existed. Right up until he saw that the Doctor was walking _with_ a girl, who looked around Nida and Leo’s age. And then the Doctor had started talking to – well, at – him, and the universe grew even more surreal. 

Maybe it’s just because the circumstances have changed. Thing had been pretty intense though their last encounter. His whole not-plan and been _based_ off the idea that the Doctor is capable of sitting down and talking. That she doesn’t randomly kill, even if he doesn’t want to try to track the various ‘reasons’ she might have. She had been friendly enough last time too, he’s pretty sure. He’d generally been too unnerved by it all to think on it, considering everything. Maybe this is more of what O sees, what makes the other side of the coin a shock. But it _feels_ wrong. Even if the muttering about the Doctor liking to randomly pretend to have amnesia is true. 

“We were _supposed_ to land in Maine,” the Doctor continues explaining. “have you ever seen New England foliage in the autumn? It’s very beautiful. And peaceful. I like a peaceful nature walk. It’s good for everyone.” 

“It’s February,” Max pointed out, without thinking. He’s distracted by the mental image of the Doctor on a peaceful nature walk. 

“Something made us land in the wrong place. And time.” The Doctor says with a look. A look she immediately drops when Max don’t manage to suppress his twitch back in his chair. The look the Doctor’s… friend, Yaz, is giving him isn’t helping with his nerves. He thinks the expression of concern the Doctor adopts is supposed to make him feel calmer, but the impression of good cop bad cop is just increasing. 

“Do you know anything about that?” Yaz asks, he suspects that there’s practice behind the carefully neutral sounding question. 

“I don’t think so? We came because there were these weird energy readings, we didn’t cause them.”

“You’re an alien?” Yaz asks, seeming slightly satisfied for some reason. 

“I’m not an alien. Not that that would be bad or anything. I mean, I’m not from Earth. But I’m human.”

“Yes, and a few centuries out from your own time, I think,” the Doctor says. “Which, I have to say, is a bit odd, as fourth quadrant Earth colonies don’t have much time travel technology, as far as I know. And I know a lot. It can amaze me how much I know, really. Though I don’t know you, while you know my name, so everyone here knows an awful lot.”

He shrugs. The location trick is one O likes to use to. He’s usually more impressed, but he’s starting to feel a bit numb. “Yeah. I mean, no, we don’t have time travel. Not that I know about. I’m traveling with O.” If this is some sort of time paradox, it’s probably best to leave it to the Time Lords here to deal with. 

“With who?” Yaz asks, and there’s something odd about her confusion. And something far, far odder in the Doctor’s suddenly unreadable expression. But then, he’s been feeling out of his depth since he first saw the Doctor, no point in trying to turn back now.”

“Right, you – I mean, some people call him the Master, apparently. But it would be kind of weird to shout across a supermarket aisle. He introduced himself to us as O.”

* * *

The Doctor, Ryan remembers, can move very quickly. And very quietly. Like a ninja. And Graham had been distracting him with his doom and gloom talk about the world maybe exploding or something. So, it’s not _that_ embarrassing to look away from Graham to find the Doctor standing there with a cheery, talking to strangers, smile, having walked over while they were distracted discussing the dangers of time travel. It’s still a bit embarrassing. Especially in the face of that smile. 

“Uh.”

“Sorry, I couldn’t help overhearing. Actually, I _could_ have helped it, probably, but I have very good hearing when the words ‘time travel’ come up, and ‘paradox’. Though that’s just one word.” She nods towards Graham. “And this is the second time you’ve come by, looking like you had something to say. I thought you might be shy.”

She looks like the Doctor. She _sounds_ like the Doctor. She’s wearing the same clothes as the Doctor. Ryan looks down to be extra sure. Definitely the same shirt. Definitely the same shirt that the Doctor had bought _after_ they’d met, and then either acquired in bulk or, in the best-case scenario, washed repeatedly. A whole giant wardrobe, and ever since she’d come out from the dressing room to show it to him and Yaz, this is what she’d worn. 

Graham doesn’t seem to have noticed. Once this whole thing is sorted, because it’s going to be fine, Ryan’s so going to bring this up any time questions of observation come up. He’ll bring it up and it’ll be fine because of how sorted everything is. He doesn’t believe she’s an answer to the question of how long it’ll take for her to forget them. It doesn’t fit with the Doctor. Unless someone messed with her memory. Or maybe Graham’s right and this _is_ a paradox. Ryan had found the short story about the man who found himself forgetting his past because it turned out it no longer existed especially disturbing, so of course that was the one the Doctor had said sounded not too far off the mark. 

“I like your shirt,” he blurts out, before Graham can come out with whatever excuse he’s obviously looking for. He widens his eyes at Graham, who gets the message, if his sudden blanch means anything. 

“Thank you,” The Doctor – he can’t make himself think of her by any other name, says, looking even more amused. “I bought in Sheffield. You know anything about the area?”

“Quite a lot,” he says, weakly, feeling like a complete idiot. Graham notably fails to help come up with anything. If the universe explodes, Ryan is so not taking all the blame for this one. 

The Doctor sighs, a little of her amusement sliding away. “A bit soon for new ones, isn’t it? He was already running around with a crowd. Or is it old ones…” She’s talking to herself, but that doesn’t make her words make any more sense. He knows what it looks like when the Doctor has figured out an explanation to a problem, but this time he has no idea what she thinks it is.

“I’m the Doctor, but I think you already know that, don’t you?” She raises an eyebrow, making a point – somewhere, though Ryan has no clue what it is.

“Yeah, we do,” Graham says. It’s probably the better choice out of that or trying on some rubbish lie. 

“Let me guess, you travel through space and time with a woman in a magic box, the sort of woman who’s first on the list to be called up if you’re worried about something going strange with time.”

“Right on the money.” Graham sounds as resigned as Ryan feels, but he doesn’t know that either of them could explain what exactly they feel resigned to. 

“Thought so. Thank you for not trying to lie, by the way. That would be embarrassing for all of us. Especially you, but also me, a little bit, by being here. You should call Missy, tell her what’s going on. It’s better if we don’t meet.” 

Ryan looks at Graham, who shrugs in reply.

The Doctor looks at them both, frowning. “Or maybe that isn’t the problem we have today.”

* * *

Gallifrey. Home, for better or worse. Usually worse. 

The grass is brittle under the Master’s feet. That’s wrong. The fields of red grass are soft, even in the dry season, which never gets as dry here as it does in other zones. That’s the whole reason there’s grass instead of sand in the first place. Gallifrey has the technology to make the whole world bloom, but the Time Lords let most of it remain dust and sand because they don’t _need_ it. A very few might say it’s a reminder of what they’d once done to the planet, but everyone knows it’s because they consider themselves too good for it. To be concerned with the land is obscurely embarrassing. Perhaps because it suggests some connection with the Outsiders who actually live there, a rejection of the Capitol that no right-thinking Time Lord, or even lower Gallifreyan, should be able to understand. 

Things changed, of course, during the war. People spread out, tried to make fewer tempting targets by creating new ways to live. The guard became a military force and then that military has always existed, a change in Gallifrey’s own history, the sort of thing that would once have been unimaginable, and there was a greater interest in the lower orders of Gallifreyans. Every war needs cannon fodder, no matter how strange the cannons. The Master had been there, near the beginning, as much as it could be said to have a ‘beginning’, when the Doctor had thrown a handful of sand in Chancellor Drey’s face. The Doctor always likes to have an illustration to go with his speeches about death and destruction. The Master had always appreciated the drama of it. 

But this is long before the war, before the children had even taken on the names that they would scrawl across worlds. Back when they were just two young boys growing up together in a world of rules, a stuffy, class ridden society that they strained to break free of. They would run away from their classes; run free through the fields and forests that young scions of the great houses had unthinkingly considered their own. The very softest grass was by the river, a relic of a time when the remaking the landscape had still been part of showing off power your family’s power. It had looked so free and wild to their eyes, eyes that had never seen a truly natural world. They would sit by the river and stare up at the stars. They would talk about how one day they would be truly free, how they would wander the stars and see the universe. They were united in their yearning to escape, to shed the social chains they could feel binding them even before they truly understood their nature. Neither of them had any other friends, but they’d learned long before even this to pretend like they didn’t care what anyone else thought of them. 

That day, this day, they had been playing on the banks of the river. In that moment, they could’ve been children from any planet where there’s room for imagination, for all they were pretending to be Rassilon and Omega fighting the great vampires. Who could listen to the tutor drone on about temporal mechanics when they could be outside and free? One of the boys – perhaps the bolder one, perhaps the one more ready to reject the world that he could feel rejecting him – liked to say that the river was a much better metaphor for time than the boring equations. Sometimes he said that sort of thing in class, his dark haired friend sinking down as the others laughed, feeling a complicated mixture of sick shame at his own silence and anger at his friend for provoking them and the others for laughing, with another helping of admiration and jealousy all mixed up together. On this day all those emotions still easily forgotten out here, away from others. 

That day, another boy came down to the river. Maybe he had been following them, seeing an opportunity to continue his habitual torment in the environment the two friends had thought of as theirs. Maybe the bully had come because he liked the river too, maybe he sought his own freedom in breaking the rules. If he did, it was a freedom to delight in finding his usual victims. They had been sitting, arguing over which of the early warships was best, they hadn’t expected anyone else to be there. 

The bully acted without any warning. He jumped, pulling the dark-haired boy into the water. He grabbed his head and pushed it into the flowing stream. The water had been shockingly cold, the weight of the hand on his head unescapable. He’d struggled, struggled in vain and knowing it was in vain, water going up his nose and down his throat, no escape, no control in his thrashing, all the lessons on the mind over the body gone from his head. There was nothing but fear, no certainty but that this was the entirety of his world. 

Even under water, with his heartbeat filling his ears, he heard the crack. He felt the hands let go and then felt other hands dragging at him, he was too tired to try to fight, but these hands pulled him out of the stream and onto the safety of the bank. He choked out water, enough that it seemed to him that it must have filled his lungs entirely. He lay still for a moment, exhausted and terrified and hurting, soaking in the sun. In that moment, he dreamed of never moving again, but he had to know. He always had to know. Even back then, they were children of a hardy species, he found that he could sit up and look without much trouble, his body recovering quickly. 

His friend was standing silently, looking down. Not at the stone still in his hand, but at the body sprawled broken below them. He stands silently too, watching the blood flow from the bully’s shattered skull into the stream, where it was washed away. Gone, just as the blood that dripped onto the grass was soaked up by the ground. In those long, shocked moments, neither of them was able to fully comprehend what had happened, what it meant. Despite his time under the water, he still was the first to realize the punishment they’d face. A life had been taken. It didn’t matter the reason, it didn’t matter the circumstances, the death would accomplish what mocking words hadn’t, extinguish any hope for freedom, for seeing the universe. If they were caught. 

They pulled the body of the other boy from the river. He had been bigger than them, he was even heavier in death, but not immovable. They covered his body in branches from the trees, and then together, as one, they set the funeral pyre alight. Together, holding hands, they had stood and watched the body burn. They saw it all, observing the ritual until he became smoke and was sent back to nature. Perhaps that was the moment they were most truly as one, maybe that was the last moment they were one, in those silent hours. 

They were never caught. They returned to their homes like nothing had happened. The boy was scolded for getting his clothes wet, sent to his room for missing class to play in the river. Nothing came of it, nothing ever did. The boys grew up, together and apart. They were friends and enemies and the only ones left. They never once spoke of that day. There are times the Master almost forgets it happened. He’s almost certain the Doctor must have, so many bodies later, so many bodies left piled up behind them both. 

Mostly, he doesn’t think about it. Just another memory left to sleep in the back of his mind. Not one that he revisits or weighs on him. But now it’s that day by the river. Except it’s not that day, not when the soft grass is brittle under his feet. A different day. Time is brittle, or maybe that’s just a dramatic metaphor, more suited to his old friendly enemy. The fire has reached these lands, dried up much of the river, which is barely more than a trickle now. He’s all alone, the old game of imagining that no one else existed outside the confines of the sloped hill now a stark truth. Gallifrey burned at the Doctor’s hand. The Master hadn’t been there. He never has to ask the Doctor ‘why’, the answer is the same one that’s divided them for centuries. But now they’re alone. Gallifrey burned and the war is over. 

“As interesting as it is to see the subconscious connections I’ve drawn between various events in my past without even being aware of it,” the Master says to the college students who are probably too lost in their own minds to properly hear him, “I didn’t sign up for therapy hour. Especially not therapy hour conducted by anything on Gallifrey, well known bastion for those who don’t believe mental health is important.”

He shatters another spider against a wall. That _does_ feel quite therapeutic, actually, but no admitting that to whatever had produced those strange energy readings and the stranger (or maybe just more uncomfortable) memories. 

“Now what do I need to kick to get some information around here.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> earlier chapter than intended, mostly because I wanted to get the last parts necessary before the Time Lords start meet next chapter
> 
> (random fact: The person known universally as the Master, if not always personally, has been politely banned from the Traken Union due to murder, chaos, and public indecency. Whether or not this all actually the Doctor's fault is not taken into much account on their request form)


	5. distance education

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> two Doctors meet, and there's not a goatee around anywhere when you need one

There are no windows. There should probably be windows. There have been worse architectural lapses, basically all of the 31st century just to start with, but the Master is almost certain that this is a more recent development. It’s in the shape of the walls. She had told Clara that, once, in back that great big Victorian house that had been transformed into a spaceship. Look at the walls, she’d said, definitely lacking windows where a window should be. Maybe he should look Clara up, say hi. Their troubles were a lifetime away. Of course, Clara _had_ said not to come around with a new face and pretend to be someone else to try to get out of their agreement. That’s the trouble with traveling companions, they can grow to know you unfortunately well. 

The Master doesn’t shake his head to try to clear away the memories, it wouldn’t do to worry his new friends. Smiling to broadly at them might also be considered inappropriate, considering the circumstances. He settles on a look full of firm purpose and certainty, adding another mental lock against memories. He’s in control, he rules his memories, they don’t rule him. 

“What did you do? There were all these… images.” The boy’s eyes are as full as awe as his voice. Honestly, most of the reason the Master had mentally categorized them as ‘friends’ was because he knows the shades of his actual friends, lurking very close to the surface, here, would be sure to complain about any slips into ‘inferior species’ and, besides, they’re basically on the same side. An ally is almost as good as a friend. But if they can keep this attitude up, it’ll make keeping thinking of them that way much easier. He does love a good audience. And they might be able to answer important window related questions. 

“To put it simply, I cut off the psychic frequency that was generating those images in your minds. _Something_ here is using memories as a defense. One of its defenses. The victim gets caught up in loops of memory and ends up stuck, ready to be picked up, or taken out by other the defenses. Luckily for you, it wasn’t made for humans, you have much less for it to work with.”

“It felt like a lot,” a girl in a college sweater says, rubbing at her head. 

He tries for compassionate. “Comparatively, but you’ve been keeping off the more aggressive defense protocols. Once I realized what it was, I took care of it.”

“How?”

“Have you ever heard that you can’t be hypnotized twice? It isn’t true, but the principle can work.” Luckily, they accept that without pushing further. He should probably learn his new friends’ names. You should know the names of people whose minds you touch, even as lightly as required for that little trick.

“So, I guess they were right about it being alien,” another of the girls says. Just the sort of thing he was hoping someone would say.

He grins at her. “ _Very_ right. Could I get your names and just who ‘they’ are? Thank you. We should have a lull before another attack. They don’t do well with having their own energy bounced back at them, as I think you’d agree.” Spiders smashing themselves against a wall should be cheering for everyone. 

He makes encouraging gestures, and eventually the small group manages to shuffle into a rough circle and get through the basics of introduction. He nods along, passing around energy bars and ignoring the knocking at the doors to his memories. Whatever this damn this is, it has some rudimentary intelligence. Enough to know to try to target him. Not enough to know how bad an idea that is. College sweater – Anna, looks a little unnerved, and he rearranges his smile again to something a little less sharp. 

“Jack sent a text,” Hawthorne – it’s probably a step up from ‘boy in the polo shirt’ – says, producing his phone as evidence. “Said there was something weird in the public health department, something alien.”

“And you believed her?”

“Well, we all know about aliens,” Vi says with a shrug. “The big dramatic attacks or whatever are usually over London, but even if it’d be embarrassing to target an invasion here in the middle of nowhere, there’s no reason something alien couldn’t show up anywhere. Or could that it could spread. Everyone remember those golden bubbles three Christmas’ ago?”

“A fair point. Exactly the sort of reasoning that would make you think that governments would make sure to keep alien spotters around –” but this isn’t the time for him to get into the practically suicidal shortsightedness of government officials, they’re college students, he’s sure they already agree with him, “You got this text, nice use of punctuation I see, and you decided to come see what was going on? If you could help?”

“Not exactly,” Hawthorne says. He looks around the circle. “I don’t really remember _how_ I ended up in here. I meant to call public safety.” 

Maria nods. “Me too. Uh, the bit about not really remembering all the steps of getting here?” The other kids nod along. “I have class nearby? Could we have been drawn in? Psychic means messing with our minds, right?”

“Yes, but it doesn’t seem to want to have you here now.” Well, perhaps it doesn’t want them here. There’s a lot he still hasn’t fully identified about whatever sort of device this is, which is… unusual. But there’s still blood dripping from the walls, even after his telepathic quarantine, and the spiders are made of bone. Law of conservation suggests that the materials for this little horror show must come from somewhere, the law of keeping calm says not to bring that up. “It could have blocked out _why_ you came in.” That doesn’t appear to comfort them that much more, but better than if their minds drift towards being eaten. “So, Jack and… Jill are somewhere in here, with this ‘strange glowing thing’?”

“Digby, too,” Vi says. 

“That explains the extra D. I assume.” Anna looks down, possibly trying to bite down a smile. A touch odd, but a good sign. They all seem much less afraid. If they were providing psychic energy, hopefully they’re a resource that can no longer be tapped.

“What are you going to do?” Hawthorne asks, all of them appropriately expectant of his pulling out some new fantastic trick. As he’s most certainly going to. 

“I’m going find the source of the unusual energy readings that brought me here and remove it. That should fix most of the problem, depending on what it’s already done. After I make some calls.”

“Calls?” A better question at the moment than lingering on what might have already been done. Humans do have their own type of psychic defense. 

“Important life lesson, Anna, never walk deeper into a psychic trap without first letting someone know where you are. While I’m doing that, you can tell me how many windows there should be.”

* * *

“I travel through time and space with O, a Time Lord from the planet Gallifrey. We came here because he noticed some weird readings and wanted to make sure nothing was wrong. That’s what we _do_. What _he_ does. He’s a traveler, a hero. He saves people, he saves whole _worlds_.” Max resists the urge to cross his arms. He has no reason to feel defensive, but he can practically feel the weight of the Doctor and Yaz’s skepticism. 

“Course he is,” the Doctor says, sounding long suffering. “Let me guess, this heroic ‘O’ has a nemesis, an evil Time Lord called the Doctor.” She shakes her head. “Does he ever have an original idea? I swear, Yaz, this is at least the third time he’s done this one.”

“How did he get out? And who’s the kid then?”

“A distraction, or maybe a shield. Possibly a robot. But I don’t think so. He usually gets robots that are a bit rubbish. He’s very cheap. Which is funny, as he usually doesn’t pay.” 

“I’m not a robot,” Max says, noting that the Doctor didn’t answer Yaz’s first question. He would’ve thought that he’d want to avoid the attention of an obviously suddenly even more insane Doctor but being talked about like he doesn’t know what he’s saying isn’t better. And is the Doctor imply that _O_ is evil and she’s actually some hero? Not that she can manage it without putting in a personal dig. O sulks for ages when people say he lacks imagination. The Doctor’s definitely the sort of person who would announce her own plan as if it was someone else’s, there’s no knocking her self-confidence, you have to say that. But if that’s how it is, what role does Yaz play? “And I’m not hypnotized or anything else.”

“It’ll be okay,” the Doctor tells him, infuriatingly. “We’ll figure it out.”

“Yeah, we will, because he’s just texted.” He slams his phone down on the table in triumphant proof. He probably should have guessed that the Doctor would immediately grab it away. She still has his last phone, after all. At least she reads the text out loud.

“‘Energy readings coming from some sort of device, most likely Gallifreyan in origin. Currently in Jenson’s Hall, the one that doesn’t have windows anymore. Remember the psychic blockers are in the left…’” The Doctor trails off, staring down at the text. “This isn’t how O texted.” She looks up at him, gaze more than a little terrifying again. “Something’s up. We’re going to find out what. Now.”

“…Are you going to give me my phone back?”

“I need to send a message.”

* * *

The Master thumps his foot idly against the desk, careful to keep his feet off the ground. The students still look slightly shellshocked after his idle question about the carpet. He has to admit, he doesn’t want to think too much about what happened to the linoleum himself. Starting to whistle would probably be taking his attuite of ease a bit too far. It’s not always easy to judge the psychological state of alien species, even one that he’s spent so much time around. He could quickly judge the _psychic_ state, but that goes very close to certain questions about ‘boundaries’ and so better let alone unless one of them seems like they’re going to panic. Besides, there’s only so much he could get from that. They mostly just appear to be taking advantage of the marvelous human ability to be bored even in the most drastic circumstances. 

The ability to _be_ boring doesn’t require the possibility of death all around, as the Master is well aware. He didn’t need another reminder in the form of boring school gossip. The Academy went for longer than most of these humans will live, he knows every facet of this type of drama. He’s seen it all, if not always done as well. A thought which provides mild amusement, thinking of old school acquaintances’ faces if they heard that comparison, but it’s a very mild amusement. Collecting gossip is so much easier if he’s going to use it. 

He doesn’t entirely hold back his sigh of relief when his phone buzzes. A distraction, and possibly a signal to actually do something. He tries to be sensible, but sometimes it’s _so_ boring. If he was forced to act before everything was fully prepared… well, it wouldn’t be the worst thing in the world. The text turns out to be far more interesting than he expected, as he’d be almost certain he’s the only one in the center of the time problem.

MAX: _what do you think youre doing_

That was… not Max. He knows Max. He knows how Max texts. He knows Max might be physically incapable of not adding little faces even to a question of if they have milk. He also knows that not many people can get into Max’s phone. 

He hasn’t decided what to reply, if he should at all, when there’s another buzz.

MAX’S PHONE: _theres more trouble here than you know_

He knows who has Max’s phone, the one his young traveling companion thinks was taken by the people who abducted him. But if the Doctor’s messaging him using Max’s _old_ phone…

He settles back, ignoring the mutter of ‘what is he doing?’ 

She’s almost certainly right about there being more trouble than he suspected. The question is what can he do about it from here.

* * *

The Doctor, as she had introduced herself, is ignoring them to frown at her phone. Graham has a lot of questions. 

“What did that muffin ever do to you, Doc?” He asks, sitting down on one of the, to be honest, freezing chairs. Time Lords run colder than humans, shouldn’t that make them more bothered by the cold? 

“Really, Graham?” Ryan mutters. Ryan’s a great kid, but he’s still young. It makes Graham worry, sometimes, watching how he’ll plunge into danger without thinking about it, with Graham trying his best to watch his back. Ryan and Yaz both have that confidence that Graham is pretty sure he must’ve had back when he was young, even if it can be hard to imagine. It also means he doesn’t always understand what’s important. There are lots of important questions, some of which they’ll hopefully get an answer to. Whether the pastries here are any good or not is a question that should be established when there’s still a chance to pick up some snacks. 

“It was terrible,” the Doctor says, not looking up. “One of the worse excuses for a muffin that has ever gone into this particular mouth. You’d think there would be complaints. Do you know how much they ask for tuition at this school? And you have to get a meal plan, which is another cost. This isn’t one of the times or places when you’d be silly expect an eight-dollar muffin to be anything other than inedible.” 

She looks up, finally, favoring them both with a smile. “Sorry about that, horribly rude, I know, but it was a bit time sensitive. In a few ways.” She licks a finger, holding it up in the air for a moment. “Whew, _definitely_ time sensitive. He really shouldn’t have gone in there; it’s started a whole cascade of problems. Well, we’ll be fine over here. For the moment. Probably. So, you travel with someone who calls herself the Doctor?”

“Yeah, and you look just like her. Uncannily like her, ‘cause it’s not just the face. Same outfit, everything.”

“Huh.” The Doctor, or not-the-Doctor, seems to be thinking about that. She doesn’t seem worried or confused or ready to leap up and run after something. It’s a bit unnerving, all this calm. “It wouldn’t be the first time, but, no, that doesn’t fit.” She looks back at her phone and then puts it away in a pocket. 

“Okay, Graham, Ryan, usually this would be a very bad idea, but I think that we should go and meet ‘your’ Doctor.” At least her look of certainty and purpose matches the Doctor’s. And the way she can just leap to her feet like it’s nothing. 

“Why is it a very bad idea?” Graham asks. Someone has to.

“I can get on my own wick faster than almost anyone,” the… other Doctor says cheerfully, bouncing to her feet and looking ready to start off – without knowing what direction to head in. “And there’s the part where all of time and space in this area of the galaxy could be ripped to shreds for a few centuries, but I don’t think we have to worry about that.”

“Why not? That sounds like something to worry about.”

The other Doctor grins. “One, because if I’m right about what’s happened, that won’t happen. Two, because if it does happen, you won’t be around to worry.” She practically skips down the steps, cheery as anything. 

“We better go after her,” Graham says. 

“Should we tell her that the Doctor’s in the other direction?” Ryan asks. It’s a good question. Graham thinks she was joking, but he’s not entirely sure on which part or how much. She looks as certain as the Doctor does, but the Doctor often looks like that, no matter how much stuff is going wrong while she looks absolutely certain she knows what’s happening. But this whole business is doing his head in, and it probably won’t be fixed by wandering further from the Doctor, the one they know and who knows them. 

“I think we better.” He hopes he won’t regret this. He amends that to, he hopes that if he regrets it, he has a long time to live with that after.

* * *

The Doctor looks less confident now. Max should probably worry about that. After all, if O is in trouble with dangerous time stuff, the Doctor is probably the best qualified to help him out. And her dip in confidence was most obvious when the _second_ Doctor walked into the room, which isn’t an improvement, in Max’s book. But she isn’t acting like he’s delusional anymore, so Max can’t help but feel a little pleased. No one else is. 

The two Doctors are staring at each other. The Doctor’s friends – the friends of the Doctor he’d followed – are staring at the two Doctors staring at each other. Max tries to ignore the sense of being outnumbered, as he tries to see the differences between the Doctors. Because, now that – and he really hates even thinking this but – ‘his’ Doctor has arrived, it’s obvious there is a difference. 

There’s not any physical difference that Max can see, except the red suspenders, and they’ve both found themselves starting to say the same thing and then breaking off to huff in annoyance, but they’re different. Maybe it’s how the other Doctor orients herself in relation to her friends, in a way that makes it clear they _are_ her friends. He’s not sure his Doctor has even noticed. He wishes that she hadn’t noticed _him_ , either, but he hadn’t missed her look. It was very. Factual. He wishes that O was here, though he’s not sure which situation would be more dangerous. He wishes that Nida or Leo was here, so he wouldn’t be the only human who didn’t know someone they liked. Also, without them, he’s somehow ended up sitting on the same side as the Doctor, facing the others. He doesn’t want the impression of sides, not when he’s sitting on this one. 

“Meeting like this is incredibly dangerous and irresponsible,” the other Doctor says, finally managing to get a sentence of her own that isn’t ‘jinx’. “One touch and there goes Earth, half of Mutter’s Spiral and a time quake through history. And we’re sitting at the same table! You should know just how bad an idea this is.” The older man winces as she smacks her hands together, though Max has to imagine the actual bang would be a bit more dramatic. 

His Doctor scoffs, “I know the Blinovitch Limitation Effect as well as you do, and _you_ know that something else is happening, by the lack of pricking in your thumbs. Unless you’ve gone spectacularly native, you are a Time Lord, right?”

The other Doctor – and Max wonders if her friends are finding having two of them confusing as he is, no wonder O likes to use aliases, though that’s more probably attached to the ‘likes dressing up’ thing – glares back at what Max is almost certain now is _not_ herself, not entirely, anyway. “There’s still a risk.”

“There are far greater risks here.” 

“Ones you know all about, don’t you?” 

Max only gets the glancing effect of the other Doctor’s stare, and he still wants to run for it. He would’ve expected that his Doctor would be unaffected, but she actually seems a little offended. Or at least affronted. “You think _I_ brought it here?”

“It would fit.”

There’s a cough, slightly diffusing the almost physical force between the two Doctor’s, as she turns to look at her friend. 

“Doc, you seem have some idea what’s going on, mind filling us in?” The Doctor has brave friends. But maybe they just know her well, because she slumps a little instead of snapping. 

“Sorry. Sorry. I’m afraid Max was telling the truth earlier, Yaz.” The girl’s eyes widen, though Max is more concerned with the speculative look his Doctor is giving him now. He didn’t ask to be mentioned.

“But – wait, you mean… _she’s_ an evil version of you? From another timeline or something?” Yaz manages to look both incredulous and believing, which is a pretty impressive feat of facial arrangement. 

“I didn’t say _evil_ ,” Max speaks up quickly, “ _You_ were the one who said evil. I just said that O is a hero, you were the one who said all that other stuff.”

“You wouldn’t call me evil?” His Doctor says, looking amused again. “If you can call… ‘O’ a hero with a straight face, I’d expect some accusation of villainy. Tales of his ‘heroics’ are usually a tell for the level of moral complexity available.”

“Not to your _face_.” He swears he usually knows the difference between being brave and being dumb. The Doctor can take a joke at her own expense, she seems to almost like them. But then he can’t stop himself from adding, “I wouldn’t say it to O, either.” He even meets her eyes. 

“How is this believable?” The boy who travels with what might be the ‘good’ Doctor is saying. “I believe it, but how did I get here? That’s not normal thing to believe.”

“No goatee to check,” the older man says. “Not even an eyepatch.” 

“The Master used to have a proper goatee,” the other maybe-not-evil Doctor sounds… nostalgic. If everything is flipped around, is she as weird about not-O – ‘the Master’ – as O is about the Doctor? 

“He had very nicely maintained facial hair,” his, almost-certainly-at-least-a-bit-evil, Doctor says, also sounding a bit nostalgic. 

The two Doctors exchange a weird look. Max wonders if it’s weirder to meet another version of you that’s like you, or one that’s very different. If he met an identical Max, they could talk about building robots and videogames and whether traveling like O is sort of like having a family – except if they were from the same time line, one of them would’ve already had that conversation so he’d always be trying to remember what he said and worrying about what might happen if he got something wrong. A Max from a different timeline, he can’t imagine. The two Doctors obviously don’t see each other as completely different. Or maybe they can’t because everyone can’t help thinking that they seem very similar. Are they wondering how different they are, or what’s the same?

“The Master from your timeline is in danger,” the other Doctor says, finally getting back to an important point. “O, I mean.” 

“No, his name is the Master. ‘O’ is just the latest alias to make things easier for the hangers-on,” Max doesn’t think anyone needed the Doctor to jerk his thumb in his direction to get her point, “You probably know more about that than I do.”

“So, you don’t travel with anyone?” Yaz asks, turning her concerned gaze from one Doctor to the other. 

“Not usually.” His Doctor shrugs. “The danger, the questions, the excess baggage… it’s not my style. No offense.” That last seems unnecessary, as her look and words had been perfectly crafted to cause offense even before the magic words. In other circumstances, Max might have wondered more about the Doctor’s attitude. Both of their attitudes. The other one might be suspicious, but his has been playing up to it with gusto. For a murderous extremist, he’d gotten the impression that she usually tried a little harder to get along with people. Maybe she didn’t shake off insults – or, to be more accurate, in his opinion, didn’t shake off well-made points about what a lot of what she does should best be called, as easily as it had seemed. But now isn’t the time for everyone, including the other Doctor, to take the bait. 

“You said that O was in a lot of danger,” Max says, loudly. “Lots and lots of danger. Danger that you have information about that can help stop that danger?” He would almost swear that both Doctors look a little sheepish at that. 

“Yes, he is,” his Doctor says, frowning. “And it’s just a matter of time before that means the rest of us are in trouble, too. Some time ago, an… artifact landed not to far from here. Arrived, might be a better term, as it was less a landing and more… dimension-y.” She wiggles her fingers, illustrating nothing to him, though the other Doctor nods, looking grave. “Some people must have found it and brought it here. Usually, that wouldn’t be too much of a problem, not on Earth, but one of the people who found it – or someone who came within range later – must have had some latent psychic abilities. Ones strong enough to start some of its systems, and then those started to feed.”

“One of those, _here_? I thought they were all destroyed.”

“Maybe in your timeline, they are. It would be hard to tell. Unless you bumped into one.” 

“Yeah, true. And now it’s got the – O. Does yours have strong psychic abilities?”

“Very strong.”

“Interacting with any Time Lord would mean trouble, but if it has him –”

“Exactly.” The two Doctors share another, identical, grim look. Everything, and everyone, else seems forgotten. 

“Doctor,” Yaz says, “Do you have more actual words about what’s going on for those of us who _aren’t_ psychic.” 

“A weapon, of sorts, from Gallifrey has landed on Earth. It’s very dangerous, especially to and around telepaths. It has a powerful telepath. I wouldn’t think that’s very complicated to follow, even for humans. Should’ve known catching on to the timeline thing couldn’t be relied upon.” The Doctor doesn’t pretend very hard that she’s really saying the last part under her breath. 

Max considers banging his head against the table. Or maybe risk throwing his napkin at the Doctor. 

“What about details on how we can help?” He asks. “Without insulting anyone so we’re stuck here until we’re all eaten by a Gallifreyan psychic-time-something?”

“They’re generally known as Greyjan’s Blocks.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> next time, more meetings and a look inside the Doctor's head.
> 
> random fact: DC!Missy spent some time teaching in various schools. According to some people, she made a very convincing school mistress who no one would even suspect of being anything other than what she claimed. According to almost everyone who wasn't a Time Lord or Lady, she was the most obvious alien to show up since the one who had forgotten about the tentacles. But she was great with the paperwork.


	6. interlude: practical fairy tales for academy students

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> a brief interlude for the not exactly metaphorical

Once upon a time there had been two children, but that was years ago, back when stories could still start with ‘once upon a time’. They’re much too old for that sort of thing now. They aren’t children, lessons on interrogating or mocking the concept of ‘once upon a time’ properly ingrained, but they’re still young on a planet that isn’t made for the young. No, too indefinite. 

Many years ago, on a planet called Gallifrey in the constellation of Kasterborous, the exact center of its galaxy (well, not exactly, but they’re told new stories to cover old fairy tales and, it was agreed, it was a planet that _deserved_ to be at the center of its galaxy, even if less poetic souls look to outsiders use of galactic coordinates), there were two friends nearing the end of their time at the Academy. They were special, because they are to be Time Lords of Gallifrey. A Gallifreyan is already special, a Time Lord is the best of the best. They’ve been taught this from before they can remember, the know that in the shadow of ‘best’ lives many ways to fail. The worst, they both agree, would be to be simply ordinary. 

They had been given names by their families, long and impressive and generally discarded for the nicknames that stuck firmly, for better or worse. It was the way of things, in a world made up of ‘the way of things’, some rooted far too deeply for even the most radical to think to question. The friends are almost old enough to realize that their tutors and elders had once themselves had nicknames bestowed on them in the Academy, names that were discarded as they stepped out of it’s halls and back to all the syllables that tied them to home and family. The ancient traditions and expectations that weigh on the students of the Academy might still represent the freest they should ever expect their lives to be. It will be a little longer before they realize that. 

Gallifrey was not a planet for the young, especially not then. The life cycle of Time Lords means that it might not be right to call it a planet for the old, either. After the first body, age is little more than a cosmetic, to the properly organized mind. Among some of the old Houses of Gallifrey, the line between child and adult was simply considered a matter of education. Are the children simply small adults or are the adults just children with more power at their fingertips, hopefully after they’ve had the lessons on how they shouldn’t use it engraved into their hearts.

There are no teenagers on Gallifrey, and the two friends might be considered a shade beyond adolescence even if you translate the experience to a different sort of planet. Not full adults but starting to get close enough to see the shape of the next part of their lives. One of them is called Theta, or Theta Sigma, for the old joke that he laughs along with too, now. He hadn’t laughed those first days, weeks, months, new to the Academy and listening with the rest of his class as Tutor Tholin read out everyone’s scores on the assignment in order, always ending with him. He doesn’t think about that. 

Theta Sigma is a troublemaker, in the same line as countless other troublemakers that have gone through the Academy. Gallifrey understands the importance of offering a controlled space for that sort of thing. Usually, the troublemaker gets it out of their system, they grow into the person they swore they’d never be. Or they prove inventive enough to be recruited for one of career paths that officially doesn’t exist on Gallifrey, where their talents can be used. Or they fail, drop out of society, go to the wastelands or, rarely, run even further. It’s nothing that hasn’t been seen before, nothing they don’t know how to handle, nothing they don’t know how to pretend isn’t being carefully handled. 

Theta Sigma goes out drinking with Shobogans late into the night, swaggering back long after the gates are supposed to be closed. He shows off bruises to classmates, who range between horrified and admiring at this proof of his participation in the fighting games that no Time Lord to be should be even able to contemplate lowering themselves to. He skips tutorials and barely seems to pay attention when he does show up, but still manages to be Borusa’s, however much the Tutor might pretend to scold him. A friend remarks dryly that he might pass some exams if he spent few nights singing in gutters or focused as much attention on a school project as he does to setting up a prank, but he just laughs. Looking back, it’s so easy to see the fault lines covered by that laugh and the answering smirk and shake of the head. 

Once upon a time, there had been two children who were the very best of friends. Two young boys who had known each other’s hearts better than they’d known their own, not that they could tell as the beats were identical. One day, they had run a little too far, and one accidentally stumbled into the senses of an old monster. ‘You have come into my lair,’ the monster said, ‘and so I may take your heart in return. I will come to you this night to take what is mine.’ The boy was terrified, sure he was about to die, but his clever friend suggested a solution: they took out their hearts and exchanged them. The monster came to the boy’s room that night, following the sound of heart beats that the monster had memorized. The monster took the heart with a triumphant laugh, and then found itself frozen, for it had promised to take the heart of the boy that had crossed into its territory, and to take another’s heart broke the rules that had allowed it to survive. That’s how the story goes. 

Life is not a story. No one would dare to tell such a fairy tale to Theta now, not unless it was presented for mockery. There’s a difference between slumming it in Old Town and letting anyone think you might take any meaning from a monster story for time tots. If anyone had told it, he knows the pattern of three responses. One would focus on the hearts, how they can be transferred and what effect that can have on the recipient. One would talk about the monster, what it might have really been, what mysteries lurk in the old stories of times they’re not supposed to touch. And one – Theta – would wonder at the truth of the closeness. 

Had the two children truly known each other as well as they thought they had? Had the accident changed that, after it left one marked by a brush with death and the other not; one almost a victim and the other seeing how far they’d go to save them. Could you be the same, after you saw the shape of your heart? Had they argued about the risk? If they hadn’t, which of the two spent more time brooding over it later? Would they grow to find that as they’d grown and learned more about how the world worked, they could no longer reach inside their chest to produce a heart so easily? Did they ever wonder if they truly shared the same dreams, or if they just wanted so badly that they ignored all the places they didn’t line up until those places grew too deep and dark to ignore? Which of them recognized that they were not the same, and which of them would do anything to still believe they were? 

He doesn’t remember how Koschei had been given his nickname. It had been long ago, something less (obviously) insulting, maybe because of the start of his given name or because he’d revealed an interest in primitive legends. Maybe he’d started it, to share in the theme. He had always liked games with words. He had always been the one who’d watched what others did and been better able to copy them. He got the good grades, and never that fond exasperation of a personal connection to any tutor. He could fit. As children, they had been the closest of friends. As Academy students, they had found each other again, even as ‘best friend’ means something different now they’ve grown too old to ignore reality. After they leave the small shelter of school – 

They’d both thought themselves so wise to the world, looking back it’s so easy to realize that there had been so much they hadn’t seen. Theta Sigma had never been sure if he really could do better if he tried, and so he laughs off the idea that anyone should care about such things. What does the Academy matter? What does any of it matter? Koschei smiles along as his friend who treats everything so carelessly, and yet still gets everything. Theta’s risks are admired, his dreams are impressive in their impossibility, drawing so much more attention than a dull, practical plan. Koschei is drawn to them as much as anyone else, more. Koschei hates being laughed at. 

How do you fix something that’s gone wrong? Do you simply go on? Find something new. Find other ways of living. Believe in the impossible because it’s always been impossible. Discard the old before it can discard you. Don’t look back. There’s always something new. Do you try to fix it? If you had something perfect, isn’t it better to hold on? Best to try recreating it, no matter what you have to ignore or force. Be right, whatever it takes, because you can’t stand the idea of being anything else, even if that means changing what that means. It’s a long, long time before either of them considers talking. 

Once upon a time, there were two friends who went out into the universe to try to see what they could find. They found marvels they couldn’t dream of, and horrors they could inflict. When they see their old friend, whose path has veered so far, they don’t like to ponder what went wrong. Eventually, as the two old friends find their paths coming closer, in the darkest of times, they remember what it was to be so close that even a monster from before the beginning of time would be fooled. They wonder if that is something that they should truly let be lost, when so much else has been. Like in any proper fairy tale, by then in might be too late.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> ...actual *specific* Doctor's pov next chapter, but a brief interlude to go before some focused work on lack of reflection 
> 
> random fact: the Doctor maintains that he only came to Earth in the first place after his second regeneration because the Master set up a signal and all the trouble that came after in his extremely reasonable attempts to leave again are (mostly) not his fault. It's suspected that not only is this true, but that Jo Grant has proof. If so, she claims that she must have lost it somewhere.


	7. body double

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which the Doctor lies, projects more than a film and takes a lot of cheap shots at the Master

The Doctor doesn’t walk across the college campus with only herself for company. For one thing, there’s a whole herd of humans mostly managing to walk and talk at the same time, though not to her. But she could always ignore them for the sake of a metaphor, the important part is that she’s not walking with _herself_. 

The ‘other’ Doctor scrapes against her nerves. It’s not like meeting past regenerations. The Doctor has bounced across her own timeline far more than is advisable; the laws of time are one thing, that creeping sense of embarrassment in seeing who you were is a much stronger deterrent. Being forced to work with a former regeneration, or, in the worst circumstances, multiple former regenerations tends to be annoying – they never listen and always complain and generally cause trouble – but she can find something to appreciate in them. Even if it’s just the confidence to play a musical instrument very badly or to walk around in a ridiculous outfit or to assume you know best even when standing next to an older and wiser version of you. You might want to give ‘em a smack or tell them to shut up or wince as you watch them fall into an obvious hole, but there’s a, sometimes very exasperated, sense of affection underneath it all. After all, for all their irritating habits and flaws, they’re all the Doctor. When it comes down to the final wire, they can be trusted to do the right thing. 

The Doctor doesn’t trust anything about the Time Lord walking next to her, and she doesn’t to make contact to be certain the feeling is more than returned. Not that she would want to make mental contact, even if they weren’t both as psychically locked down as possible. The Doctor, the other one, at least has that much sense. The other Doctor. She almost wishes for the Master’s obsession with fake names, something _other_ to pin on that face. Another thing she never feels about past regenerations. 

The humans, the Doctor’s, not the Master’s, are muttering about the Doctor being in a mood, and how it’s an understandable response to running into your evil counterpart and what would your evil counterpart be like and how long have you been thinking of this Graham? It’s not that the Doctor objects to pointless chatter, but they have to know that they can both hear them. The Master’s human, at least, is focused on slightly more important details. The other Doctor’s thoughts are a mystery, of the type the Doctor can usually guess all the twists of before the end of the first page. 

The Doctor doesn’t care what people call her. Maybe there are times when reactions of the humans who spend their time with the Master are too obvious, the demand for a response can’t be ignored (“So, I’m the villain in this, am I?” The Doctor had said, eyebrows that time were just perfect for glaring, “Oh, that’s great, that’s perfect to know. Just need to get a proper cape to wear and learn all the proper supervillain secret handshakes and we can make sure there’s no more confusion.”), but it doesn’t really mean anything. 

The Doctor isn’t a Dalek or a Cyberman (no, it’s just ‘Cyber’ now, isn’t it, and maybe she should look into figuring out who had changed their timeline, she doesn’t think it was her, hopefully she would’ve done a little more than make them a bit more robot and make some slang appropriately awkward) or some random maniac who likes going around destroying things just because they can. There’s destruction, but that’s just part of how things work. The universe is a far more fragile place than most people like to think. Sometimes a meteor hits a planet and destroys everything right before they would’ve discovered space travel. Sometimes a Doctor is needed to cut out the poison, a necessary wound.

It had been the Time Lords who had truly turned her into a destroyer of worlds, but that’s in the past. You fought in the war, she wants to say to the other Doctor, you had to. How else would you have recognized this weapon? Where else would you have learned its workings but under the most extreme circumstances? Or maybe it had just been a curiosity. Maybe this Doctor truly was different, maybe she had run and hid from it all as effectively as the Master had. Who had ended her war? Who had stopped the Time Lords, no matter what it took? No matter how many times it took, damn Rassilon and his ‘plans’. But Gallifrey is dead and burned, those questions don’t matter. She doesn’t care. 

The Doctor knows she isn’t a villain, and the universe can be enough of a pantomime that there are some who deserve such a boringly stark label, so it doesn’t matter what some people think. She has never done what she does because of what people think. If she cared about that, she would have stayed home, lived a meaningless life, full of power that wasn’t used to _do_ anything. Over the centuries, there have been plenty of people who understand and just as many who don’t, both types only really matter in how they sometimes try to interfere or help. She acts to make things better for people, she doesn’t need their appreciation, too. That’s another reason it’s hard to imagine the Master taking her role, he has always needed to impress people. 

The other Doctor is judging her based off her version of the Master. The other Doctor is judging her because she’s afraid of herself, of what she can do and what she doesn’t do and what it all means. She knows enough to know that the Doctor has stepped over where she has drawn some line, and she thinks that means she doesn’t have any lines. The Doctor can see every word of her thoughts’ writ plain, and to think she would’ve thought that it would be hard to read her own face with a different mind behind it. But, of course, that’s the point. That’s what makes both of them hold back from fully pushing the brewing fight into words. The fear of what they’ll find. Of what the humans will hear. 

The Doctor notices that another of the Master’s tagalongs has joined them when they reach his TARDIS. In a different body she might have labeled the girl as ‘back up muscle’ to join ‘easily kidnapped’ (roles that were usually combined, along with ‘annoying good at one specific thing’, who hasn’t shown up yet, but as the Master has a whole crowd this time, presumably they decided to delegate), but in this regeneration she’s better with names. 

So, she knows full well it’s Nida, with Max joyfully attached to an arm after the trauma of – well, actually, meeting her probably does count as reasonably traumatic considering past experiences, who tells them, “A few other kids have gone missing. Most with ties to this girl half of them had a crush on. There are a few other possible connections that Leo is still checking through. It’s getting obvious that something’s off, the students I talked to are aware that something is happening, but they can’t move from that to the ‘do something’ stage, even when pushed. When I brought up Corly Hall, I just got a lot of blank looks. That’s the hall where all those public health classes are held. The one O’s stuck in,” she clarifies for the new round of blank looks. “None of you got the name?”

“Things are definitely getting worse,” the Doctor says, ignoring that last part. “It’s time to go in.”

* * *

“What have you done to your TARDIS,” the other Doctor says, scowling at the newly arrived ancient tree that the Doctor brings her to, the human off to collect what’s needed from the Master’s. 

“It’s not my TARDIS,” she says. “I wasn’t going to risk her near this. It’s the Monk’s. Luckily for all of us.”

“Except the Monk,” the other Doctor murmurs, and there’s a glint of something there. Oh yes, they’re definitely not quite a different as she’d like. Then she turns that look of moral indignation back on the Doctor again. “Because you knew there was a risk even before you arrived.”

“You got me, I knew there was a risk, like I _told_ you ten minutes ago. Oh, and I set up this whole elaborate plan involving it, except I didn’t because I don’t _do_ that.” Well, she usually doesn’t do that. It is not a marked feature of this regeneration. 

“What _do_ you do?” Amazing, actually being asked, though she doubts it was asked with an open mind.

“I travel, make things better.”

“Do you know how many times I’ve been told that by people who’ve never made anything better?”

“Probably as many times as I have. Do you go around telling people you’re there to make things worse?”

“Max is terrified of you.”

“Max was dragged through dimensions that are uncomfortable for a human and spent a while being tied to a chair in the middle of a locked warehouse, he has some negative associations.” The whole thing with the plane probably hadn’t helped, but the other Doctor already made up her mind, she’s not going to feed it. “That sort of thing tends to happen with people who travel with Time Lords, it’s why I usually travel alone.” A point to her, and a solid one. She knows that look.

“Right. You travel alone, just helping people.”

“Oh, because _you_ help people. No, you _save_ them. You’re as much a hero in your timeline as Max has no doubt told you ‘O’ is in ours. I could believe that, I know how he works. An invasion stopped there, status quo maintained there –”

“I can just bet I know how you work, ‘fixing’ what you see as the big problems, no matter the price. No matter what anyone wants, not that you’d know what that is because you’re too busy knowing better. The Righteous Doctor. It’s supposed to mean more than that.” 

“You don’t know _anything_ , you just see yourself –”

There’s a loud, fake cough, and both of them turn to see Nida standing at the door. “So, we’re all set. Your friends seem to think you coming along is a good idea.” The girl doesn’t need to add that she has serious doubts about that, and probably had even before she’d walked in on them a few words away from violence breaking out. The Doctor has to admit, she knows how to keep her cool. “Max wanted me to add something about O being in trouble and danger to the timeline or whatever, and I’ll point out that it sounds like a tricky puzzle. Something for you to use to show how clever you are.”

Nida’s spun away before the Doctor can point out that she’s going to the wrong Time Lord for that approach. Not a bad exit, overall.

* * *

The humans are all kitted out in protective gear, though the Doctor isn’t sure what the silver hat Max is trying to jam down over his hair is supposed to do, except maybe as an attempt to make him looking too ridiculous for any self-respecting being to want to deal with. It’s an approach that’s worked for her, a time or two. 

Generally, the Doctor doesn’t really mind humans. She’s travelled with a few herself, and they can be useful enough. She doesn’t mind Earth, either. Except for when she’s been stuck on it. Or during the time when the Master had gotten into television meant for teenagers instead of the usual toddlers and started whispering ‘hard man, making the hard choices,’ when the Doctor was trying to be serious and laughing would’ve been inappropriate. 

The Doctor has morals. The Doctor has never thought that she’s been beyond them because of being a Time Lord or knowing more or being able to talk in iambic pentameter, or whatever other reason Time Lords and other megalomaniacs have pulled out over the centuries. She acts within her own moral framework, which she’s developed over the centuries and is never going to suddenly look at and shout ‘oh no, it turns out I’ve been evil this whole time, how can I repent my crazed desire for meaningful change,’ or whatever it is some people want from her. She doesn’t think that she’s the only one that _can_ make some hard choices, she’s just proved to be so. Still, after the Doctor had lost the umbrella, he had started failing completely at not laughing at the Master’s bad joke. 

(“After everything, all the people you’ve been, all the dramatics, you settle on the version that’s even more of a tool than usual?” Kode had asked, mostly just entertained by it all. 

“It’s the less obvious desperation,” the Doctor had said, carefully painting another piece of the puzzle.”

“Ah, makes sense, that’s probably what used to get me, before” Kode had said, nodding. “It can sort of work, if you can get the balance of ‘and so I’m really good in bed’ but it’s hard to distinguish that vibe from ‘so I’m going to make a lot of badly organized mixtapes.” 

“I’m sitting right here,” the Master had pointed out, sardonically, “In case you forgot.”

“Your mixtapes were always very good,” the Doctor had assured him, mouthing ‘no they weren’t’ as obviously as he could manage. 

But that was a long time ago, in different circumstances.)

It’s been a while since she’s travelled with anyone. A while since the heavy silences of the TARDIS grow too much to bear. A while since she’s hit a point of weakness and asked one of the eager, vibrant people she always finds if they’d like a trip through space and time. They rarely refuse, even though she tries to make sure they know the danger. She makes up lists for herself. Only if they’ve seen the dangers that come with her when she lands. Only if they’re quick on their feet and adaptable and good at surviving. Only if they don’t have something more important. Only for one or two trips. And never look back, never find out what happens after. She had told herself that she’d ended up with a regeneration that likes being alone. She always tells herself that. 

The Doctor doesn’t see the appeal in these particular humans, but she knows that’s because she doesn’t want to. She tries not to look at them. She tries even harder not to see how the other Doctor is with them, not to think about it.

The Master is her oldest friend. He’s one of the more entertaining of her enemies. She has admitted, out loud, that there are occasions she doesn’t mind his company. Which generally provoked a fight, if nothing more interesting was going on, that could cover anything from who is more of a liar, how the _Doctor_ has never tried to change the _Master_ or gone on about how he’s really like her deep down, any one of an endless list of slights they’ve inflicted on each other over their long acquaintanceship, to how many emotions anyone _really_ needs to throw around and the Doctor is perfectly in tune with hers, even if she doesn’t chose to inflict them on the universe at all times. And, besides, she probably owes him to save him from this latest trap. Paying too much attention to the other Doctor’s humans runs a risk of making her forget all that in favor of the urge to push him into a volcano. Listening to the Master’s humans provides a slight distraction. 

“It is hard to imagine the Master as evil,” she puts in, making Max jump. 

“Really?” Nida says, raising an eyebrow. Teenagers. 

The Doctor shrugs. “We’re talking about a man who would be a stamp collector, except the ‘exciting’ bit is a bit too much for him.”

“O isn’t a fan of stamps with mistakes on them,” Max agrees. He actually sounds sad. At the Master not being there, not over the fact that his personal hero is a deeply sad figure who has spent multiple lifetimes concerned with the hydration levels of more poorly designed species. 

“Can you really come for anyone else’s hobby?” Nida at least knows that a statement was made that the Master needs defending from. “I’ve seen the models. How elaborate was that trainset?” Other things she’s tried to address with the Master: just why his companions always know far too much about her. It’s embarrassing. For him, mostly. 

“The spaceships were impressive too, it’s not easy making them work on such a small scale. It’s takes a lot of skill with engineering.” 

“Oh, is that what you’re calling it.” 

“ _I_ can call it that, because I build them from scratch.”

“There’s nothing wrong with following instruction on a kit,” Max says. “It’s sensible. It’s good to have plans.”

“Yeah, what exactly is our plan here?” Nida asks, raising her voice slightly. The Doctor could tell her it was unnecessary, the other Doctor is a terrible eavesdropper. And her answer is the exact same as the Doctor’s.

“We’re going in and stopping things.”

“That’s the whole plan.”

“It’s a great plan, it works every time. Except for the times it doesn’t, when I do something else instead. The more complicated a plan, the more likely things will go wrong.”

“Nothing at all can go wrong if you just walk confidently into a place and announce you’re the Doctor.”

“Not wrong with the _plan_ ,” the Doctor points out. It’s a plan that works for her all the time. Except for all the times it doesn’t, but there are mitigating circumstances. And, really, since those almost always happen _after_ the part of walking in confidently and telling everyone she’s there and ready to fix things, they practically don’t count as reasons it’s not a great plan. 

Five human face all reflect shades of the same response to that. “Right, Doctor, are you sure you don’t want any of this kit? There’s plenty of extras.”

“I’ll be fine,” both Doctors say as one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i was planning on them meeting with O about two chapters ago, but getting there eventually. the Doctor has a lot of memories of when the Doctor has gone 'but what if I do what I want'. DC!Doctor has a lot of sulking to fit into pretending not to.
> 
> random author fact: the soundtrack to the meeting of the DC!Doctor & DC!Master that's not exactly in this chapter is a combination of 'Somebody That I Used to Know' & 'What Do You Mean'.


	8. bottle episode

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> one, two, three, four / i declare a time war
> 
> or at least some old memories

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> people being way too okay with destroying planets; brief references to various painful deaths; and... romance (?)

The Doctor tries to dislodge her bad mood. In retrospect, perhaps she should have started working on that before entering the active influence field seeping out of the Greyjan’s Block, but it’s been a bad day. No, that’s negative thinking, it’s been a bad couple of hours. Everyone has a bad couple of hours, every now and then. Finding out that a slightly worrying, but possibly exciting, energy reading is actually far worse than just ‘worrying’ is just the sort of thing that’s almost guaranteed to bring you down. It doesn’t have to retrospectively ruin a nice breakfast. 

It’s fine. 

She glances at the other Doctor. She would rather not, it definitely doesn’t help with her mood, but out of sight out of mind isn’t the method for the hour. She hates – she _dislikes_ thinking those words ‘the other Doctor’. The Doctor’s name means something. It’s a name people recognize. She doesn’t always like what it means, but for all the loom threat of a storm it carries some places in the universe, most of the time it’s something good. It’s a story, one that sometimes she needs most of all. When she’s slipped, she’s usually at least known not to take the name with her.

She’s sure that the other Doctor has carved her own meaning of the word into the universe. She’s sure that there are stories whispered in the dark about a traveler known as the Doctor, and what happens to the places she lands. _Her_ name. Because under the stories and legends and reputation, it’s the name that means something to the people she cares about. If it’s her at her best, it’s because they are. Without friends who simply understand it as a name, there’s no anchor to the stories, nothing to stop them from being all consuming. 

It’s why the Doctor had tried to give up her name during the war. She hadn’t wanted ‘the Doctor’ to mean the woman a little down the hall, whose brow is furrowed slightly as she checks her readings against the Doctor’s. She hadn’t wanted the Doctor to be someone who burned away Gallifrey, and together, they’d made it so the Doctor wasn’t. They’d lived up to the promise that she doubts the ‘other’ Doctor has ever made. 

The Doctor tries not to think of the war. Usually it’s easy (or she tells herself its easy, and she’s good at convincing herself of things). It’s the past, as much as anything that had torn the holes it had through time could be called ‘the past’. It’s over. And then a weapon starts reshaping realities and the past can’t be neatly filled away, in a box shoved into a dusty corner with several heavier boxes stacked on top. 

The most unsettling part in dealing with the Block is that time doesn’t feel wrong. There’s none of the sickness or sense of flayed edges or silent screams from where time is being twisted. It’s like fake fruit. Or, at least, that was the metaphor he’d used to try to explain it to a non-time sensitive. Imagine a piece of fake fruit, he’d said, perfect in every way, appearance, texture, even the smell of it telling your senses that it’s a true apple, right until you bite down. The dubious looks he’d still received for his twitchiness had suggested to him that either it wasn’t a perfect metaphor, or his temporary soldiers just hadn’t had very good imaginations. 

Things are wrong. She _knows_ things are wrong. But none of the senses that should be practically screaming are going off. The cloister bell had been silent in the heart of all the TARDISs. And she’s bringing her friends deeper into this, in the company of someone they don’t realize how little they can trust, in order to save the Master. 

The Doctor tries very hard not to glare at where windows should be but have taken an unearned leave of absence. All the architecture is slightly wrong, really, meant to send troubling whispers down the spine. It’s all very dramatic. Her mood, somehow, has failed to improve.

* * *

The Master is certain there’s something he’s forgetting. He’s almost as certain it’s something important. Possibly revenge from the universe for the airy claim that Time Lords never forget the truly important details. He resists the urge to fiddle with his high collar. That’s the Doctor’s fault, with all his snide comments. He hadn’t thought anything of it before. It’s the fashion of Sirius IV, that’s all that matter. But of course, the Doctor had to go on and on about dressing the part when doing the Time Lords’ bidding and now he can’t help but think of school. He can’t touch his collar because he knows that Jo will give him another one of those looks if she catches him. 

Josephine Grant has proved to be a most able assistant. She’s also turned out to be a good friend. In both roles, she is very useful in a crisis, but she does have the strangest notions at times. The Doctor’s remarks are annoying. The Doctor’s attempts to stir up trouble between Earth and Draconia are dangerous, and frustrating. So much work shredded in so little time. The Master had taken him into custody because he could just imagine how much more trouble the Doctor could have caused otherwise, all while the extremely frustrating Captain believed that he had him locked up safely. It’s a very simple explanation. 

Still, he had rather enjoyed watching Miss Grant deliver her stern lecture to the Doctor about his behavior. _Had_ enjoyed. That had been long ago, lifetimes ago. Though he does sometimes like to recall the moment. The Doctor’s lofty words about the necessity of conflict in the pursuit of progress. His slightly confused look when faced with Jo’s stubborn rebuttal, complete with several digressions into manners, dress and the headaches he caused for no reason. Afterwards, she’d shaken her head and announced that considering the metaphors, she doesn’t think he could be a very good Doctor. 

The Master looks over to where the Doctor is working. He wonders what this one would say, now, about warfare’s place in the march of progress. 

The Doctor has cut his hair. It’s unusual, for someone who’d normally be more than happy to continue wearing a stolen Halloween costume through an entire regeneration. As much as he likes to go on about change, at any opportunity, the Doctor can stubbornly hold onto choices longer than anyone else the Master knows. If it was pointed out, he would probably roll his eyes and say something about overthinking everything. Perhaps he might add something about how some of them have grown out of dress-up games. 

The Master hasn’t given up on trying to make the Doctor understand that interacting with people isn’t a game, but it’s one of the arguments that takes a lot of energy. He’s tired. He’s been tired for a long time, even as the Doctor seems to become more of a livewire every day. 

(There’s a red patch on the left sleeve of the Doctor’s jacket, so this is after Liv had left, taking Molly and Kode with her. She had told the Master to try to stay safe, biting back other the other comments he knew she could have made about his choice. She told him to stop by, when he could. It had been kinder, perhaps, than had been deserved.)

They work well together, as they always have. This is the ultimate puzzle, the ultimate trick for them to pull off. There’s an ease between them that hasn’t been there since – since so many things. Perhaps it had never been there before. Perhaps it’s something new, forged as everything else grows harder. They talk about the good times. They share stories of what they’ve seen out in the universe. They work: The Doctor practically willing new and ever more horrifying creations into existence, with the Master beside him to make sure they’ll actually function. Perhaps the usual bitterness that would swirl with old memories is leeched away by the content of the vault. 

“How many times do you think we’ve done this?” The Doctor had asked.

“Done what, specifically?” The Master replied, wary of something he couldn’t name. Perhaps it was the absent look on the Doctor’s face, like the running of some unknown calculation.

“The War. How many times do you think we’ve fought it?” The Doctor had smiled. He’d known the Master couldn’t make himself ask ‘what do you mean’, even knowing that would be the safer choice. He has far too much pride to pretend he didn’t know. He couldn’t pretend that the Doctor’s words weren’t the fuse that lit up thoughts he had otherwise kept in carefully in the dark. “We’ve always fought the time war. But, of course, we haven’t. We know that. We know that there was a time before the beginning, at least for now. But once it began, it has always will begin.”

The Doctor’s eyes felt too heavy, even as his voice was almost light. “The Daleks are back, you know. Maybe they’ll be our opponents next time. Or the time after that. Maybe they were our opponents last time. It can never end, not now. Not after it tipped from possibility to certainty. The treat of mutual destruction, and now the switch can’t be flipped back.” The Doctor’s hands were very still. The Master had watched his hands, because it felt safer than looking him in the eyes. They were both far too good at reading each other.

The Doctor will end the war. The Master had always been sure of that, in the way he had always believed in him, but this was the moment of certainty. This was when the Doctor told him, even if he hadn’t said the words. The Doctor is a big believer in aggressive amputation. There are some things that are hard to survive. 

The Master wants to live. The Master wants to live so much that he had hidden himself away at the end of the universe, hidden even from himself. All the centuries of complicated emotions, everything that ties them together and drives them apart, however much it was muffled by the weight of the war, in that moment he had known with complete certainty that he would rather live than die by the Doctor’s side. The Doctor had walked through so much death and destruction, but the Master wasn’t sure that this time he wouldn’t just. Stop. It had been a while since he had let himself look into the Doctor’s eyes. 

The Master had run. He had regenerated. He hates regenerating. He does his best to keep that a secret, though the Rani had managed to figure it out and enjoys mocking him for it. It’s one of the few topics the Doctor doesn’t strike at, but then, the Master suspects the Doctor is a little afraid of regeneration too. In the Academy they had gone over and over regeneration, the gift of the Time Lords, the envy of lesser species. The teachers liked to talk about regeneration like it was little more than picking a new robe, perfectly controlled. Perhaps some of them were truly so lacking in personality there really wasn’t much difference. The Master hates it, the loss of control, the knowledge that he would be someone else, still the Master but – different. He hates knowing that each time brings him closer to death. 

After the end, there had been life. The Doctor ended the war, as he was always going to end the war. The Doctor survived, as the Doctor always survives. The Master survived too. He has looked into the Doctor’s eyes again, even with all the new fracture points. He has never asked if the Doctor had expected to make it through. He has never asked if the Doctor was warning him or asking for help. He doesn’t try to figure out if the new certainty between them is what brings them together or if it’s what cuts them apart again. 

The Master opens his eyes in the increasingly unhygienic classroom, not trying to hold back his smile, no matter how alarming it might look. The image of the weapon under the Doctor’s hands is still practically glowing on the inside of his eyelids. He might be in a lot of trouble, but he has an absolutely _fantastic_ mind to help get out of it.

* * *

Gallifrey is burning under their feet. The Doctor tries to tell herself it’s not real. She tries to focus on worrying where her companions have gone, what psychic loop they might be caught in (she tries not to be relieved that they aren’t here to see this, to see the Doctor here). She knows it’s the Block generating the image, but she knows it’s real. 

Gallifrey had burned. Gallifrey had lived. Gallifrey had burned again. It had taken so much to find a way that it could exist. She had spent so long without the anchor of a home, however disliked. She had spent so long knowing that she was the one who had torn it out of reality, the one responsible for every loss. 

Gallifrey had lived again, like a sandcastle painstakingly crafted away from the tides. Only to have a foot kicked through it. A petty metaphor, for the stupid, petty game. She doesn’t want to think about it. 

The other Doctor looks… uninterested. She’s seen this all before. She’s done this all before. It’s written as clearly on her face as it is on the Doctor’s, but she still can’t stop herself from asking. 

“Did you do this?”

There’s a moment of hesitation, not guilt, but the other Doctor biting back her desire to say, ‘you were the one who brought us here’. “Yes.” 

“Why?” 

The other Doctor stifles a sigh, impatient. “It ended the war. It was never going to stop, not after it started. Not when it became what the Time Lords were.”

“So, you killed all of them.”

The other Doctor does sigh now. “Yes, I did. So, did you. You saw the exact same thing as I did, and you knew you had to act. Does this performance make you feel better? I’ve never been able to see the point. Feeling guilty over doing the right thing is a waste of time, we have things to do.”

There’s so much she could say. There’s so much the Doctor _should_ say to that. To the casual dismissal of so many lives, to the vicious confidence that being ‘right’ makes it okay, to all the reasons it’s important. She wants to, wants to believe that she could reach the woman whose face she can read so easily, who can read her disgust just as clearly. 

But it’s too dangerous to do that here. Her fam’s in danger. Max and Nida and all the students who have already been sucked in are in danger. The _world_ is in danger. She doesn’t have time. There are things that need to be done. 

(Need to be done _first_ , she tells herself to offset the sick taste of those words. To push away the thought that it had been pointless to try to get an answer for the Master’s actions, when she’d already known what answer the Doctor would give.) 

“Focus on the center,” the other Doctor says. 

The Doctor manages a nod, forcing everything else away. 

“Focus.”

* * *

The Master burns. Not always. Sometimes he freezes or feels the impact of bullets or everything draining away leaving him paper-thin, but mostly he burns. He ignores it. It’s all too rushed to have the same impact as the actual deaths. Besides, they always like this trick. 

The Block isn’t as clever as he is – obviously, there was no doubt, but it might be smart enough to feel his smugness and that’s good enough. He ignores the sensation of not being able to breathe, the pain that will sear into him throughout a lifetime. Really, this is sadly uncreative, after the earlier attempts. Though, of course, most of the creative part of those had been his own mind working to slip the information on what he was dealing with past the, ha, blocks in his memory. At least he’s never died by drowning, and the defense is sticking to deaths. 

_I lived_ , he says to the inside of his carefully shielded head. _All those deaths? I survived them. I mastered them. Do you think I’m afraid of death?_ It would be slightly more satisfying to speak his words out loud, but the Master can be accused of the occasional monologue, not stupidity. He’s not going to give the damn thing new ideas. He just has to get to the center. 

He might be trembling a little by the time he stumbles into the right room. The problem with ignoring psychic attacks by a weapon that can alter reality is that ignoring them doesn’t mean they didn’t happen. Everything hurts. He almost feels ready to regenerate out of sheer belief in the deaths that keep banging on his mind. Which is more than enough to make him angry enough to get a good swing at the thing with the backpack full of heavy textbooks before collapsing, trying to get air into lungs reality kept trying to tell him were destroyed. It’s very inconvenient. 

He’s absolutely certain that his swing made a start in shutting things down _before_ the Doctor strides into the room. Twice. Which is a little alarming, but less important than being certain that he’d already practically rescued himself. The Doctor can do a little clean up for once. It’ll be good for her. 

When the Master blinks his eyes open again, fully alive, there are still two Doctors standing over him. It’s not any less alarming now that his mind is clearer. Both of the Doctors are scowling. They aren’t identical expressions. The one on the left is worried, upset, annoyed at being upset, and probably thinking of something insulting. The one on the right is… something. 

“Stop pretending to hit yourself on the head,” his Doctor says, rolling her eyes. “It’s not as amusing as I assume you believe after too long traveling with children.” 

The Master’s ‘attempting to clear his vision’ acting is a marvel and hilarious, actually, but sometimes there’s nothing to be done about the audience. “Another result of the Greyjan’s Block, I presume?” 

“One of the few problems not caused by it feeding on you.”

He smirks, enjoying the ease of the expression. “There must be an impressive number of those.”

“I see your ego has recovered as well as I expected.”

The other Doctor doesn’t look impressed at getting to witness one of their first mostly civil conversations since the big fight. She looks – there’s something that feels wrong about looking at the Doctor’s face and not being certain what he’s seeing. He can’t claim that he can always read his Doctor, but even when he can’t, he still _knows_ her. He’s pretty certain the other Doctor is irritated, but that’s about it. It’s unsettling, and not what he would have requested.

On the other hand, knowing the Doctor, the presence of her other self is probably helping shape the conversation in a far more promising direction than it would otherwise. She gets fussy enough about dealing with other regenerations. He can only imagine that a different version of her standing, observing, is even worse. The other Doctor’s dislike might get him further than even just having a weapon to disarm together, which is usually the best chance at forging a shaky peace. 

Back on the first hand, he’s pretty sure he’s had this exact nightmare. Which is a bit much, after the Block running through highlights of a few other common ones. His Doctor’s on edge. Another, unreadable Doctor is glaring at him. A weapon that shouldn’t exist needs to be dismantled. And he’s lost a button off his vest. 

The Master contemplates flinging an arm dramatically across his face, but he’s not entirely sure of his balance. The Doctor probably wouldn’t catch him if he falls. At least he can ask pointed questions about what they’ve done to contain the Block. He’s already pretty sure it’s not as locked down as it could be.

* * *

He feels wrong. It’s not because the makeshift containment unit the Doctor had set up with the other Doctor is strong enough for her to properly feel the prickle of alternate timelines. The Doctor had stood close enough to the Master to hear the rage beating under his skin. She’d made _contact_. For the sake of her plan. For the hope of sensing – something. She knows this Master; knows who he is under the psychic pretense he’d held when pretending to be O. 

But this isn’t _this_ Master. This Master is… contained. If only in contrast to the feeling of a burning that couldn’t be fully constrained by his physical form. This Master is supposed to be _better_ , but he’s practically glowing every time the other Doctor makes an only somewhat grumpy comment in response to his smug ‘advice’. It’s almost enough to make her want to say something about self-respect, but then, he _is_ a version of the Master. 

The Doctor looks up at the ceiling that’s currently above them. It appears that she’s angry at the Master. It’s strange, because she knows what it’s like to be angry at the Master. It’s a familiar emotion, but usually only prompted when the Master’s there to be angry with. She’s good at not thinking of the Master when he’s not there, because she knows he wants the attention. 

The same stupid game, over and over. The demand and the refusal. And now he’s finally figured out how to win a round. He’s left her angry, left her the destruction of their planet and the dangling string of a mystery so she can’t cutoff her attention. The stupid game, now with a body count. But, of course, it’s always had a body count. From the very beginning it was letters for families of the dead and the Mike Yates’ uncertainty in his own head and the guilt of knowing that even seeing what he left behind, the Doctor had enjoyed parts of the game too. 

What’s the _point_? She suspects it might just be to make her ask that question, and, after everything, maybe she’s finally gone past just being tired with it. After the escalations. After the hopes of something _different_. After it’s Gallifrey gone, and that brings its own tired guilt, when she thinks of how much else the Master has destroyed over the years. 

She doesn’t want to see this.

* * *

The Master sits back, frowning. 

“What is it?” His Doctor asks, which, for once, isn’t enough to cheer him up completely. 

“Someone turned this on.”

“Yes. We noticed.”

“I think I probably noticed more.” Maybe not the time. He shakes his head. “I assumed the girl – Jill – who had it just had unusually high psychic powers for a human and it started up again off of that, before getting a far richer meal.” The other Doctor seems distracted, but she still manages to join his in looking unimpressed at his dramatic hand gestures. Philistines.

“I take it you were wrong?” Oh, he just _knows_ the Doctor had assumed that too, if she’d even gotten far enough to know basic details before charging in, but that’s something for later. 

“The sunk energy required to get it booted up enough to affect me as much as it did would take a lot more than what a human has to offer, and it was a lot more focused. This was planned.”

“An interesting plan,” the Doctor says dryly, but she’s taking him seriously. She doesn’t even say anything about his choice of metaphors. The furrow between the other Doctor’s brows has deepened suddenly. He doesn’t think it’s a good sign. “What do you think the plan was? And who set it up?”

Any response, or question to the other Doctor, is interrupted by a crackle of energy. Energy that sends the Master falling back, _again_. He doesn’t have the best angle, but his fragmented suspicions coalesce almost before he sees the familiar shape. 

“I hope I haven’t missed my cue,” The Master says, with a smile that he can only hope he’s never worn.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> post credit scene:  
> DC!Master, already so incredibly embarrassed: ...did you double back on your own timeline in order to wait for a straight-line to appear on? 
> 
> a little later than I planned, mostly because of deciding whether the DW!Master was going to show up or not, connections with the final and all, but since the final turned out to be useful for explaining one of the important differences in the DC!Doctor & Master's relationship (...not necessarily levels of self-respect) and tie to the bigger plot, I could go with the full out option on Time Lords


	9. retcon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> humans doing it for themselves (sort of)
> 
> ft. the Doctor

Max doesn’t think that the Doctors are fine.

“Nice detective work, Robin,” Nida had muttered, because she always gets more sarcastic when she’s worried. Max doesn’t mind. Nida being sarcastic is familiar. Nida being… something else would be even more reason for him to worry. He had enough when the Doctors were there, looking like they were trying to hide a bad headache. The other Doctor’s friends had been focused on her, and their faces made it even worse. He wishes he had O there to focus on, even though he’s almost certainly not fine, either. 

Things were a little easier after they had split up. Max would like to go for O, but the Doctor’s right that he’s probably in the thick of things, where their telepathic shielding would break. O had told them that it could only stand up to so much pressure. Besides, they have a list of humans who are probably still in the hall, and someone has to get them out. The more minds this weapon has to draw on the stronger it’ll get. Max doesn’t like the lack of answers about what that does to the minds. 

The Doctor’s friends aren’t happy about splitting from the Doctor, either, but they know that it’s important they go for the people who don’t have any protection. It’s turned out that the other Doctor has awesome taste in friends. The circumstances kind of suck, and he won’t be able to think more positively about them until they get a final verdict on O, but at least he’s gotten to meet some totally kickass new friends. 

Their shields aren’t completely effective. Neither of the Doctors had given any decent explanation of what’s going on, but Max had gotten the gist, which basically seemed to be ‘horror movie generator’. One that twists reality as well as perceptions, or maybe perceptions are the reality, the Doctors had argued over that, possibly because it had started out almost understandable. 

Max can feel enough with most of it to be blocked out to be very glad they have some protection. They can still all see the marks. It’s obvious in the architecture of the building, which is all slight, or not so slightly, wrong. The sound of their feet echoes or comes to softly. The dimensions are off in a way you have to focus to notice consciously but hits the subliminal fears. It’s cold and too dark. The rooms are even worse.

Max doesn’t like the dark. He really, really doesn’t like the dark. He’s not ashamed of that. Fear isn’t something to be ashamed of. Fear is a reasonable response to a lot of things. It would be totally reasonable if he had developed his dislike of the dark after all the things that have jumped out of it at him while he was traveling with O. He hadn’t, which is good, because that means he has the techniques he’d practiced with his therapist on how to manage his response. That also helps with dealing with people who can be jerks about it. He’s still much happier to be going through the flashes of nightmares with people who aren’t jerks. 

They develop a whole system, almost without needing to say anything. Nida pulls the doors open, face set against whatever hits her before it equalizes. Yaz and Ryan are first through, with Max and Graham waiting to keep things stable outside if there’s no one there, ready to go in to help if they do find someone. 

Usually, they find small knots of people. They tend to be shaky even after they get one of the bracelets that provide a bit of relief from whatever has their minds. Yaz is good at getting a few answers out of them, names to check off the list Leo had sent Nida if nothing else. Further in, sometimes there are things that aren’t just in their minds. Max suspects Nida finds a chance to hit things with the makeshift staff she’d picked up a nice relief, and the others are appropriately impressed, though they’re not so bad at taking out some weird looking creatures either. 

As they walk, Graham tells him about some of the adventures they’ve had with their Doctor. Sometimes he plays up a bit, to distract Ryan into a joking argument about what actually happened. It’s supposed to be partly reassuring about the sort of dangers they’ve overcome, and Max is happy to take that, and add it to what he knows O has overcome. Graham clearly cares a lot about Ryan and Yaz, and Max likes that part of the stories as much as adventure bits. He clearly cares a lot for the Doctor too.

If they don’t end up snapping back into separate timelines, or something, Max hopes he’ll get a chance to actually talk with their Doctor when she doesn’t think he’s mind controlled, without the distraction of her other self. He really hopes that O gets a chance to talk with her. Or maybe that would make him feel sadder about their timeline not having the awesome version who goes around making the universe better and safer. But it would probably still be good to get to talk to someone who was like him, who could understand. 

The Doctor’s friends are very interested to hear about O. They’d briefly met the evil version, but Max doesn’t think they’re humoring him and only pretending to understand that their O was very different from what small pieces they’d learned about ‘the Master’. They only know _very_ small pieces. It sounds like the Doctor doesn’t like to talk about things much. She hasn’t said much about Time Lords or Gallifrey or anything. Though if her Gallifrey is still out there, that might explain it. It’s a different timeline and stuff, but from what O has told them, Max can see why she might not want to elaborate on not wanting to bring them to a planet where the best case scenario is probably being called a lesser species and hearing comments on how weird it is to travel with humans.

* * *

After they’ve finished reassuring what has to be almost the last group that O is going to be okay – something which Max tries to tell himself he’s as confident in as he sounds, trying not to look like they’re too desperate for details, and push back through the exit to the less psychically sickening outside world, everyone clusters around Max again. 

“You’re say…” Graham starts, trailing off into a silence full of staring. Max has never been able to let silences go empty, even non-awkward ones. 

“Planet of the posh xenophobes, yeah. That’s what he said. Like this country club we were stuck running around for practically three days, trying to get rid of the monster before their security threw us out.”

“I still think we could’ve just left them to it,” Nida mutters. Max decides not to have heard that, he can argue more convincingly when a little more distant from nightmares. 

“Anyway, it’s kind of embarrassing? I suppose even to people who’ve firmly declared themselves opposed to that sort of thing. Especially to them in general, obviously, but also in terms of explaining why you don’t want to visit. O didn’t mention it for ages, and he talks about everything. _And_ we _can’t_ go visit his version, so he has a defense from the sort of person, Nida, who says stuff like ‘so does that mean you’re embarrassed to bring us home’ and so on.”

“Very subtle mention of my name there,” Nida says, rolling her eyes. 

The Doctor’s friends are still staring off a little, contemplating this new angle on their Doctor’s desire not to talk about her home. Or maybe wondering if she was okay or if they’d gotten everyone or if it’s lunch time. Max is sure they’re thinking about _something_ anyway. Usually, he’d ask, but there are still things that need to be dealt with. 

“I’m going to check in with Leo, you guys have this?”

“No worries, son.” Graham says, patting his shoulder, which is nice. All three of them are very nice. It really makes Max wish he could stay here instead of giving them a wave and jogging off towards far less nice people. Well, person.

* * *

Max is certain the other Doctor doesn’t give people the sort of look ‘his’ Doctor gives him when he reaches her. It’s an especially undeserved look as _she_ had been the one who had texted _him_ to come meet her. Still, it’s easy to ignore in favor of relief. 

“You’re okay?” 

“I’m fine. So, yes, ‘O’ has survived his experience. Time Lords can survive a little psychic attack.” It’s even harder to repress his laugh at that when she’s giving his ‘cough’ such a confused look. 

“That’s good. And it’s good that _you’re_ okay too.”

Her look gets even more suspicious. “How does he find people even worse than he is?”

“How do I resist shoving them both out an airlock when they get annoyingly positive is the real question,” Nida says, strolling around the corner of the building. “I think the answer is why the TARDIS doesn’t have airlocks.”

The Doctor frowns. “I only texted you.”

Nida slings an arm around Max’s shoulders. “Good thing Max here hasn’t suffered from as many knocks on the head as you’d think if you only saw that he came to meet you in the first place.”

This time Max rolls his eyes, though he doesn’t pretend to even try to shove Nida off. “She used O’s codeword. And it’s called the buddy system,” he tells the Doctor, “It’s very important.”

The Doctor looks at them and then shrugs. “Fine, both of you, then. But that’s the limit, so the rest of the band better not be dragging over their oboes.” Max had noticed that the Doctor doesn’t like looking at the other Doctor’s friends. He wonders if it’s because it makes her think of the great friends she could have if she wasn’t such a jerk. But that would be mean to say.

“They’re handing out the shock blankets and dealing with the campus cops. I told them I couldn’t let you go off and accidentally fall into a hole.”

“That was one time,” Max protests. “And O fell in too. It was very well disguised.” 

“Is that why he’s not here?” Nida asks, trying for casual. She really doesn’t like anyone to know when she was worrying about someone. 

“Probably not, as much as he might want one. But he’s fine, and we’re wasting time. The TARDIS is waiting. Just one trip.” Max is almost sure the last isn’t meant for them. 

Max examines the Doctor again as they hurry to catch up with her as she strides over to her TARDIS, which had taken the shape of a tree that he hadn’t realized looks a little out of place. Noting, again, the silver bracelet she’s wearing now.

“You’re from the future!” Max announces, as they enter the console room. “You’re _cheating_.” He sends Nida a worried look. 

The Doctor waves a hand. “Don’t looked so panicked. I know the Laws of Time as well as anyone, including which ones should actually be paid attention to, and when. Time here has been twisted enough that this isn’t even a ripple.”

“That’s not why I’m _worried_.” He’s not panicked, exactly. 

“Still scandalized by time travel?” The Doctor isn’t paying the conversation, she’s more involved in slamming on various switches. 

“O says the reason you don’t usually do this isn’t because you care about any laws, it’s because you see the world as a game and like to set the difficulty to a setting that’s interesting to you. And you treat people like they’re as disposable as video game characters. If you’re using a cheat code, something’s wrong.”

The Doctor looks away from a screen to stare at him. “He really does just talk about me all the time, huh?”

“Not _really_.” Well, yes, but someone has to defend O. “It just sometimes comes up. Occasionally.”

“Like when Max is losing to Leo at video games for the ten thousandth time and O sighs dramatically until Max gives in and asks what he’s thinking about before he starts crying into the controls,” Nida is not doing her part. 

“Sometimes, there are such clear parallels that memories can’t be avoided and are probably helpful to know. And he wasn’t crying. Though there’s nothing wrong with expressing your emotions.” 

“You were playing Tetris,” she says. It’s a hard point to argue with.

The Doctor looks weirdly nostalgic. “Ah. I can see why that might have brought up a few memories.” She might mock O, but he’s clearly not the only one with memories.

* * *

The Doctor has a very… interesting way of flying her TARDIS. 

“Work you, piece of junked time,” she says, thumping the console, hard. There are a few sparks, possibly in responsible, possibly just because she’s pulled out a whole bunch of what look like wires. O would probably say they were something far more advanced and sophisticated than wires. Max just clings to his seat as the ship shakes. 

“Have you tried not hurting her?” Nida shouts, from where she’s holding on to a column. 

“This isn’t hurting!” the Doctor shouts back. She hits the console again. “I don’t care if you haven’t landed anywhere other than a museum for the last three centuries, you’re going to work.” She brandishes her screwdriver. “This isn’t coming close to touching the actual TARDIS. It’s like… hitting a toenail clipping. Or cut off hair. The metaphors would work better if you lot had any proper exoskeletons!” She huffs as the TARDIS lists and she slides back into a chair. “She’s just huffy. Talk about time machines coming to look like their owners. I hate drivin’ other people’s ships. They have all the wrong settings. But we have an understanding now.” She gives a wall a look that would make Max feel threatened. 

“O drives, differently,” he says. At some point, he’ll probably be able to make himself let go of his clutch on the chair. 

“He drives like a tourist driving a rented car in Florida. Probably complete with the hat. Which is plenty dangerous, in its own way”

“How many times did it take for you to pass your driving test? I bet he got it the first go,” Nida says, looking like she’s only leaning casually against the metal pillar instead of holding on for dear life.

“All those regulations are just because they didn’t like to admit that a TARDIS is much more than some spaceship. Passing the first go is a sign of limiting your own imagination. He probably keeps on all the interface controls. You have to be willing to get right down there, really respond to whatever happens.” 

Max privately thinks that that sounds even stupider than when he’d been stuck listening to that guy going on about how driving stick was so much more meaningful and a sign of a true driver. He’s also pretty sure that all of O’s examples about what can go wrong if you mess with a TARDIS aren’t just based on a true story but specifically based off something that’s happened to the Doctor. Still, seeing her like this, cheerful and confident in the middle of chaos that’s probably only lethal to them, it’s easier to see why O keeps going back than it had been when he’d seen them fighting. 

Nida might have had the same thought, or maybe she just likes trying to windup the Doctor. Nida can be like that. 

“So, you were definitely the one who dumped him, right?” She even makes her way over to sit in another of the seats, as if she’s not at all worried about them flipping over and smashing into the ceiling or the wall. “Leaving us to deal with him being a moody, dramatic bastard.”

The Doctor shrugs. “He’s always dramatic.”

Nida nods at Max. “ _He_ likes to think that O noticed that you go around murdering people and was like, alas, I cannot be with one who cares so little about lives or good taste. The sorrow of our parting is deep, yet righteous, and maybe one day she’ll stop for about half an hour and then I can get over all those planets and get to it. But I put my money on you just ditching him. Was it over text?”

O has said that the Doctor doesn’t take pleasure from just randomly killing people. Actually, after three glasses of ginger pop, O had given Max bitter monologue about people who need to think that they have moral codes, and want to be admired for it, while claiming that they don’t care what anyone thinks of them. But that had been a private conversation. But not taking pleasure from it isn’t the same as _not_ killing someone for saying something she doesn’t like, or from coming up with a reason that it’s not random. 

Max keeps his eyes on the Doctor, looking for any sign that they should start leaping out of the way. Though he’s not sure she’s the type who would give a sign. But the Doctor just turns away, studying the display again. Or pretending to. 

“We regenerated around the same time. That’s never easy. Adjusting to the changes, and the Master has his own… hang-ups about it. It probably made the fight we had worse than it might have been otherwise, though it was always going to happen. It’s far from the first time.” 

That is – well, it’s alarmingly lacking in insults. And honestly what they’d basically figured out had probably happened, which is also kind of weird. 

The Doctor looks at him. She smiles slightly, probably easily reading his expression. “We’ve always gotten along best in the face of other Time Lords. You’re worried about why I’m ‘cheating’? It’s not without reason. We found out who set of the Greyjan Block.”

“That was on purpose?”

“Yeah. It was a trap. And a distraction. One set up by a Time Lord who, even for one of us, was impressively aggravating. Likes to go on a lot about how there’s no undoing all that he set up.” The TARDIS rocks slightly. “And now that we’ve landed, I think it’s time to prove him wrong. Ready to face yourselves?”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> DC!Master TARDIS team has so many code-phrases. Because they think they're fun. 
> 
> Fun fact: the Doctor has pointed out that with the layers of controls the Master uses, it would take ages for him to do an override to throw out large parts of the interior dimensions of the TARDIS in order to escape being dragged into a black hole. The Master has suggested maybe just trying to avoid black holes.
> 
> next chapter: an Aggravation (or 'Bureaucracy') of Time Lords might be the official term for if you have more than three of them together; and a look at whether or not DC!Doctor is acting honestly with good intentions.


	10. channel drift

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A snit of Time Lords
> 
> or, various old friends talk to a stranger

Long ago, while at the Academy, not too long after the Doctor had deigned to show up to a class for once, probably just so he could say, in response to Borusa’s pointed questions about the absence of their nearest satellite, that he hadn’t even know they had _had_ a moon, with such offensive levels of smugness that if Borusa had claimed that his descent into evil started from that moment instead of from some sort of desire to keep Gallifrey ‘safe’ he would’ve gained support instead of judgement, which was one of those moments where the Master had realized he was in love with the Doctor (there have been a few over the centuries, all of them somehow surprising), the Master had written a poem. Time, which can occasionally offer a few kindnesses along with her many cruelties, has blurred the exact phrases, but it had gone something like ‘if Gallifrey wasn’t protected from the offense of multiple timelines, I would believe that you and I would be together in all of them’. Poetry was not a frequently featured subject in their studies. 

The Master had never given the Doctor his poem. Sadly, this was less because he had come to his sanity and more because he’d casually brought up the recurring motif of connections with someone across every timeline that could be found in the literature of non-time traveling species and the Doctor had said he thought it sounded creepy. The Master had gotten so depressed by that he’d gone out to get drunk alone for once and after a few hours of determined misery had come up with the brilliant idea to convince the Rani to agree to claim that they were ‘dating’. The Doctor had mentioned Earth only a few days before as sounding interesting, though possibly sarcastically since the ‘compared to here’ at the end was obvious, so the Master had looked up everything he could on the planet. He’d had to give the Rani three of his backways into the Matrix before she would agree and then when she had – 

Well, it hadn’t been the Master’s best year. Luckily, the Doctor had never put it together at the time and since she seems completely free of flashbacks to the Academy, will probably never realize the extent to which the Master had completely humiliated himself. As long as the Rani never mentions it. The Master can still remember the thirteen seconds of icy terror after the Doctor had said ‘I suppose you were always fond of Earth’ before he’d realized that it was just a generalized insult that wasn’t going to go any further than that. 

The Master has long given up poetry, except for the occasional insulting limerick. The Academy is generally just a bad memory, that can be repressed with ease, usually, after long practice. Gallifrey had been shoved off it’s lofty stance of being separate from timelines and done its best to prove worse than all the rest. Things have changed. 

Still, he has to admit, to himself, that he can’t help but look at the other Doctor to see how she reacts to the other Master’s appearance. There are a lot of sensible reasons to check her reaction, the more information he has the better able he’ll be to figure out what to do next and what resources he has to work with, but it’s not just that. 

He might not be able to read her like he can his Doctor, but he’s pretty sure that he’s reading the vaguely murderous impulses correctly. He tries not to feel inexplicitly cheered up by that. At least, he tries not to show it where his Doctor might notice. Luckily, she’s also looking at the other Master. Though, annoyingly, she’s using amusement to cover over whatever else she’s thinking. Honest amusement, which makes it much worse.

 _How long do you think he practiced that_ , the Doctor asks, casually. As if they haven’t just been under serious psychic attack, or as if it hasn’t been ages since they really talked at all, let alone telepathically. 

“Of course, it would be _you_ ,” the other Doctor says, focus completely locked on the other Master, who is basically preening under it. The Master tries not to sigh. 

The Master had told an old companion that psychic communication isn’t like texting. Since Peri had been before that was the ‘thing’ it would be later, he’d amended it to say that it wasn’t like writing a note. The note metaphor really hadn’t managed to convey the same feeling that could be contained via a slight twist on the word ‘texting’ the calls on a social consensus of reactions from the early 2000s. That’s one of the problems of switching what era traveling companions are from. 

Still, his point that making psychic contact is a lot more than that had remained. It’s not just words, it’s reaching out with part of yourself. Which is, generally, the case. Then there’s the type of psychic communication that is basically like writing something on a piece of paper and holding it up to a window so you can declare your love to someone without their husband, who happens to also be your best friend, noticing. 

He’d never _call_ this sort of contact mental texting, but he’d have to admit that it’s not a completely off-base comparison for someone to make. Especially as it had been mainly honed back in school, when they had wanted to send messages without their instructors knowing. He and the Doctor rarely communicate this way. Even as light as it is, it requires far more trust and care than either of them feels, most days. The Master is a naturally talented and powerful telepath. The Doctor’s mind is vicious and she’s full of tricks. It’s better to keep some lines carefully drawn (most regenerations, anyway). But he’s not going to turn down the invitation to the metaphorical chat room. 

_I wouldn’t dare guess. What do you know? Skip the bad joke._

She adds a purposeful touch of smugness, but she’s feeling obliging enough not to say ‘pretty much everything important’ or any of the many other variations on that line she’s pulled out over the years. Or maybe she just knows that he’ll supply them himself. _According to the other Doctor, and her ‘fam’, he’s you but even more dramatic and slightly more evil._

“Been looking forward to seeing me, Doctor?” The other Master says, even his hair is hanging over his eye in an unnecessarily dramatic way.

 _Which I’m not finding hard to believe_ ,” the Doctor adds dryly.

 _Ha ha_ , he sends back in curling script, carefully making sure none of his reactions to everything that she’s implied in a couple simple lines comes through either mentally or on his face. 

“When I discover myself in the middle of a stupid plan, it’s amazing how your name can come to mind,” the other Doctor says, practically spitting out the words. 

“Oh, are you _upset_ with me for some reason,” the other Master says, sounding giddy with glee. “Oh, _why_ could that be.”

 _I hope you’re taking this opportunity to think about how stupid your hair looks like_ , the Doctor says. 

_I’m more impressed the other Doctor hasn’t thrown anything yet. The building’s cleared?_

_You say impressed, I say yet another reason to avoid being ‘good’. I would throw something for her, but it feels rude to interrupt. Your little friends should have gotten most of them out. They’re very worried for you._ It’s amazing how mocking centuries of history can make a bland comment made by someone who isn’t even looking at him. 

_Good. Bet on how long before they remember us?_

The other Doctor and Master have temporary given up words to just stare intently at each other. He’s pretty sure they aren’t actually in psychic communication, beyond what they can read clearly in the other’s expression. He doesn’t add ‘do you think we ever look like that’, because there’s no answer to that question that he wants to hear. 

_Two seconds. Loser has to listen to the other Doctor’s lecture on morals._

“I take it you set this up?” His Doctor, the complete and utter cheater, says innocently. The Master resists the urge to send her an obscene message as he casually gets to his feet. 

The other Master makes a flourishing bow. The git. The Master suspects that they might be similar enough in certain respects that he had never actually forgotten that there were two Doctors in the room. But winning a bet through that argument would be much worse than losing to someone who will try to rewrite dictionaries to win at Scrabble. 

“I hope you’ve enjoyed it,” he says, smugly adjusting his, admittedly nice, purple coat. 

If asked, the Master would’ve have had a pretty easy time coming up with an image of what an evil version of himself, from some other timeline, would be like. Obviously, he’d _claim_ that it was difficult and be varied levels of insulted, depending on how the subject came up, but that’s just for expectations. Truthfully, well, he _is_ a Time Lord, after all, and that means he’s always walking a thin line. And, personally, he might not make everyone call him that, but his name _is_ the Master. That’s probably an entry on some list of warning signs. The Doctor likes to say that she’s had to intervene to prevent him from taking over several planets. In at least one instance, she’s telling the truth. 

So, yes, the Master could imagine himself the villain. He can imagine how easy it would be to take that step. It’s easy enough to picture that he sometimes brings it to mind without prompting to remind himself of the importance of a little balance. He could imagine a heroic Doctor defeating the evil Master (he’s pretty sure that how she sees it in her head half the time, as it is). But that’s not… this. 

He had always imagined that some other, evil version of himself would be _more_ controlled. More locked up in his own head, never listening to friends he probably never made in the first place. Maybe follow the Doctor’s line and be more certain of his own righteousness, though he likes to think a bit higher of himself, even an evil one. A version of the Master who’d taken the Time Lord’s lessons on the definition of ‘peace’ or ‘progress’ more to hears and had then methodically decided to try to impose them on other parts of the universe. 

The other Master isn’t that. Or, if he is, he hasn’t also taken all those lessons on how a proper Time Lord should comport themselves to go along with it. He’s not just spilling himself out through the room, he’s practically throwing it all out there. It should be embarrassing, the way running into certain of his other regenerations can be embarrassing or thinking back on some more needlessly emotional moment, but it’s not. 

Well, it’s not _just_ embarrassing. Obviously, it’s a little embarrassing. Especially since the Doctor is here, watching. Two Doctors are here, and the Master both doesn’t want to think too much on what they might be thinking, and desperately wants to know. 

“Not sure ‘enjoy’ is the word I’d use,” his Doctor says, actually smiling a bit. Definitely a positive expression there. Not that the Master is going to start over analyzing that. He’s well aware that they’re in a potentially dangerous situation and the Doctor is playing her own game and the other Master is laughing for no reason – 

“Oh yes? What would you use?” 

The Doctor flicks away a non-existence piece of dust. “Surprisingly interesting, maybe, considering who you are.” She waves towards him; in case the other Master could somehow miss her incredibly obvious point, possibly because he’s busy laughing to himself like an idiot. “Honestly, I would have expected something a lot more boring. This has potential.”

There’s something that could be a flicker of hesitation before the other Master regains what he might think is a sardonic smile. If it was the Master, he’d be trying to take apart her insult while crafting his own and trying not to get stuck on what could almost be a compliment. If she had said that to him. But she hadn’t. He can’t claim to know what some strange Time Lord is thinking, just because they share a face. 

“It would usually take longer for you to admit that,” the other Master says, rallying. “I had to pick a timeline as similar to mine as I could –” he waves to demonstrate the doubled faces, “But I suppose there are always some differences.” He’s _explaining_ himself. 

His Doctor raises her eyebrows. “You could say that. I think they might be slightly large differences then you were expecting.” 

The Master doesn’t actually _jump_ when the other Doctor taps his wrist. He had seen her moving towards him, even if he was slightly preoccupied. If he was using the Greyjan Block as some tool in a large plan, he’d tried to keep as many factors the same as he could. But large chunks of information can remain the same while personal relationships can diverge wildly. He doesn’t imagine himself so important to the universe for that not to be true. Maybe the other Master does, but he can’t be fully certain. 

The Doctor is using that. She is pressing on that possible uncertainty. She’s grabbing at the obvious… something between the other Master and other Doctor and seeing how she can use it. She has whatever she’d learned from the other Doctor. She has what she knows of him, and she’s always been willing to extrapolate. A good offense can be a great defense, and that’s always been her way. The other Master is clearly disbelieving, but he can’t be certain of how much is faked. 

After all, the Master isn’t certain, and he knows her more than anyone. 

He suspects that ‘I’m not sure’ is the honest answer to the question in the other Doctor’s eyes, but he can’t admit that. Not while his Doctor is working to change the balance of control in the situation. That’s almost certainly what she’s doing. There’s no way she’s _actually_ impressed by all of this. It’s not that creative. He’s done much more interesting things, and she never admits it. 

The other Doctor rolls her eyes and yanks him out of reality.

* * *

“What was that for,” the Master – asks, reasonably. No spluttering is involved at any point, even though it wouldn’t be an unreasonable response to the fact that the Doctor had broken the damn containment unit and dragged him into a psychic roundabout. His Doctor had implied that this is somehow a ‘good’ version of her, to fit with the evil version of him, but there’s plenty of reason to have doubts about being alone with her. 

“I wasn’t getting much from you, as distracted as you were, and I didn’t feel like standing around, listening to rubbish.” The Doctor shrugs, like she’s being reasonable. 

“We could be missing out on vital intelligence.”

“Could be but aren’t. What we’re missing out on is a whole lot of bragging about a plan that likely boils down to he’s teamed up with someone to do something but actually plans to betray them for something in pursuit of absolute power. It’s like a really boring Mad Libs. Believe me, I’ve heard endless variations.”

“It could be a lot more interesting if my Doctor starts adding ideas.” Maybe that’s a little unfair, but her casual attitude grates. Especially since he’s (almost) sure it’s faked. At least a bit. It’s still a stupid line, one the Doctor doesn’t fail to capitalize on.

“You think she will? Seemed like a play to the ego to me, but what do I know.”

“I don’t know what you know.” 

“A whole lot, really. It’s pretty amazing.”

He laughs, he just can’t help it. He feels his shoulders relax, almost unconsciously, as he gives the Doctor a wry smile. “That’s just what she’d say.”

She glares at him, looking ready to snap something back, and then just sighs. She sits down, arms resting on her knees. The Eye of Orion. One of the most tranquil places in the universe. There’s an unspoken offering in that. He sits down too. 

“It’s been a while since I’ve been her,” the Master says. 

“Me too.” The Doctor almost smiles. “It’s all the tranquility, I think. Half the time it’s infested with day trippers and everyone looks at you if you get properly annoyed at them.”

He chuckles. “You promise your companion a restful stop, away from the crowd, and it turns out to be the same day that every hippy in the nearby system has decided to show up to talk loudly about how great it is to find restful, untouched nature. Getting into an argument in one of the most people spots in the universe is just embarrassing.”

“Yeah.”

“Yeah.”

They sit in silence for a few moments, together, in the memory of a good day. 

“We shouldn’t have left. It’s important to be able to fill in the blanks of that ‘Mad Lib’,” the Master finally says. 

“Maybe,” the Doctor admits, which he feels he might be able to take as practically a heartfelt apology and admission that he’s completely correct, “But I wanted to talk to you. And I’m not sure how much longer I could’ve stood that.”

“I managed to get the impression you weren’t particularly happy to see him.” He pauses. “Or me.”

“I don’t know you.” She gives him a sideways look. “Though I can’t say much about your choice in company.”

“You don’t know her, either.” He deserves the look she gives him for that one.

“I know one or two things.”

He breathes out and rubs his face. He doesn’t want to start a fight. Not again. “And I probably know worse. I’m not usually in the habit of justifying her actions. It’s just been… a long day.”

“Old friends?”

“The oldest.”

He suspects that they’re wearing very similar expressions. Or, at least, that they can both understand the other’s expression without any trouble. 

She sighs. “I would say I don’t justify his actions, but I’ve justified why I haven’t stopped him completely. There was I time I thought –” He waits but she doesn’t continue. 

“My Doctor, she doesn’t hesitate in stopping things completely. No matter what it takes. There are times when it’s better to choose a different option.”

She just shakes her head. “What’s her game plan?” Professional mode activated. 

“Find out what he’s planning. Stop it, in an embarrassing way if she can. Mock us too, probably. Then fly off.” He tries to look confident. 

The Doctor hesitates. “Are you sure.”

“No, not really.” Not if there’s something his Doctor thinks she can use for some other plan. 

“I’m sorry.” 

The Master stares at her. His Doctor never apologizes because that would allow someone to suggest the possibility that she wasn’t right. Obviously, this Doctor is different, he’s kept her separate, but it still feels wrong. An unsettling glimpse into something he doesn’t know how he’d start to describe. “…Did you say that just to mess with me?”

She grins at him. “Maybe a little bit. But I am sorry. You aren’t the Master I know, it’s unfair to transfer issues.” 

“I’ll tell you now, there’s only so much pleading you’ll be able to get out of me, no matter your methods.” 

“I’m prepared to compliment your vest.”

“ _No matter_ your underhanded and vicious methods.” She throws a few pieces of grass at him. He leans back dramatically. He tries not to feel a corresponding sinking when her smile dips again. 

“He doesn’t trust her. Just looking to see if there’s an advantage in them using each other.”

“There could be. At least in the short term. And hiding in here is a pretty short-term plan, too.” 

“I know. It was really less of a plan, more just an action.” 

“I didn’t want to point out the obvious.” 

The Doctor scoffs a little. He wonders who she sees when she looks at him. Would the other Master be as pleased by attention from _his_ Doctor? What does he want? The Master has had some flaming rows with the Doctor, he’s literally ended up on fire after some of them, but there was usually some kind of plan. Does that hold true? What is it that the other Master is looking for? Does he know?

“You have any ideas? I’ve been told that you’re the man who always has a plan. Not a _good_ plan, most of the time, but conceptually –”

“I have a plan. We need to start moving.”

He doesn’t like the idea of being ‘found’. Besides, he’s sure to come up with something, any minute now.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maybe if the Master hadn't phased it like, 'wow listen to this stupid thing that primitive people who are probably stupid write about', then the Doctor might have told him that he's into the idea of people who come together across different time lines, just in a 'because of who they are' sense instead of implications of destiny. but he'd still have definitely laughed a lot at the Master's poem. 
> 
> anyway, both Doctors are convinced that they understand and can read the other without problem. DC!Master believes they look very different, and that his own alternate universe counterpart is equally hard to read. Are any of them correct? How much should the DC!Doctor be trusted? Where does the Master's plan fall on the scale of evil to *very* evil to totally evil?


	11. nle

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> what do extremely amazing and practically all powerful people have to be jealous of?

The Master explains his plan as they make their way across the Himalayas, ignoring the distant calls of Yetis. It’s not exactly a master plan. Well, it’s a Master plan, obviously, but not really his best. 

The Doctor looks at him, snowflakes landing in her hair not making her look any less skeptical. “So, your plan is to try to shut it down completely, in hope that will send us bouncing back to separate timelines instead of just shorting out the protective field, destroying a large section of time and space.”

The Master thinks for a moment. “Basically, yeah.”

The Doctor grins, sudden and bright as the sun deciding to favor a day that he’d thought would end up grey forever. “Brilliant, exactly what I’d do.” 

“That’s not very comforting.” 

“It’s simple, it’s direct, and it’s basically all we have.” 

He still thinks she just like risky plans (or ‘plans’) far too much to be comforting. “Comforting last words, how many times have they been yours?”

“ _You_ are the absolute last person who can say anything about how many times I’ve regenerated.” 

The both pause, the dip in the mountains changing to what looks suspiciously like a Welsh quarry. Or possibly the Death Zone on Gallifrey. What a nightmare _that_ had been. The Master still can barely believe that even the Time Lords thought that bringing back Rassilon was a good idea. Thinking about his people’s various stupid choice is better than pointing out that _he’s_ not the last person who can say anything. It shouldn’t be so easy to slide onto dangerous ground. 

“The two of us should be able to break it,” he says.

“What regeneration are you on?” She asks at almost the same moment.

“Fourth. But I hadn’t gone through all twelve before. The Chameleon Arch – It doesn’t matter.”

“Yeah. I’m very good at breaking things, and you can make sure no one stops me.” The Doctor says, and they’re away again.

“I’m not going to defend my own capacity for destruction.” 

“But you want to. Just a bit.” 

He returns the Doctor’s smile. It’s hard for even him to tell which of her moods is real. But then, she could probably say the same thing about him. He doesn’t ask what regeneration she’s on. 

“You’ll have to deal with your Master, alone.”

“It’s generally not that hard.” She ignores his glare at that bit of bravado, which could be for the best. He’s not sure whose reputation he’d end up trying to defend. “And I’ll have my friends.”

“Of course. They sound like good people. I’d have liked to meet them, in other circumstances. One where that might signal the collapse of the universe.” She doesn’t fully roll her eyes at his statement of the obvious. He’d hoped that might be a distraction.

“They’re brilliant. Your friends seem nice.”

“Nida claims not to settle for ‘niceness’, but, yeah, they are. They’ve been good traveling companions. Help me keep my head on straight.” 

“Friends can do that.” The Doctor’s shoulders are tense again, full of questions she’s not asking. He doesn’t know what to say. This isn’t something they talk about. His Doctor usually tries to act like she doesn’t notice that he travels with people. He knows all the times she hasn’t been alone. 

“It’s complicated.”

“Is it?” Yes, it had been a stupid statement, but he’s a Time Lord, he shouldn’t find her gaze so unsettling. She shakes her head. “You – the Master likes to dismiss them, which makes all the times they’ve helped beat him more embarrassing, so you’d think he’d admit to generalizing.”

“Never admit to anything, our ancient code. And if he’s anything like me… he’s probably a little jealous.” 

“That’s obvious.” But she’s gone flat again, instead of teasing. “It’s a stupid jealousy.”

“A lot of jealousy is rather stupid. From us, as we’re pretty amazing. It’s much easier to just start listing all the things it’s practically impossible to imagine being jealous of. Though that can get insulting very quickly.” He doesn’t want to talk about this. That has never stopped any version of the Doctor. 

“You know why she travels alone.” The Doctor stops, giving him a look that suggests that he better produce a good answer to her non-question if he wants to get them back on the small matter of possibly saving (or potentially destroying) a universe. 

“I don’t know why the other Master would refuse any offers to travel with you.” He can make some good guess, quite a few that involve pride, but that’s not nothing when trying to deal with the Doctor. “Though it doesn’t seem like you really want to be in his company at the moment. Traveling with people you don’t get on with is a bad fit. The Doctor and I manage to get along as well as we do because we have our own TARDISs, and we fight all the time!”

The Doctor continues to stare at him, undistracted by the admittedly slightly weak attempts at distraction.

* * *

The silver blankets that unfold from the packages that Max had given them are pretty impressive. Yaz can see Ryan playing with one of them behind the girl she’s trying to talk to, and she can understand the temptation. It’s practically cuddling up to the students, without feeling at all alarming. ‘Blankets that move by themselves’ seem just the sort of thing that would fit into the horror of ordinary things gone strange, but Yaz doesn’t think she’s alone in not being at all worried that they’re suddenly going to start trying to strangle people. 

Maybe it’s just being out of the building. Everything in there had started to feel a bit like it was auditioning for a horror film, being away from it is having a definite reviving effect. Maybe too much so. Yaz is a little worried about where Max and Nida had vanished off to. There had been some suspicious looks on display. 

Still, some rules have proved very true while traveling with the Doctor, try to concentrate on the task in front of you is one of them. 

“Your name is Jill, right?” Yaz asks again. Even with the Doctor in the middle of it all, it’s not too hard to hold onto her patience. Not when Jill looks so out of it. She’s still shaking, though there had been a twitch to pull the blanket a little closer, which is hopefully a good sign. 

“…Yeah.” Jill blinks her eyes. Yaz tries not to think they look a little too pale. The phone picture she’d seen of Jill had been clear, but she hadn’t focused on what her eyes looked like. The light can play tricks. 

“I heard that you came into contact with the box?”

“…Yeah.” Jill blinks again, looking a bit more alert. She twists her head, worried. “Are Jack and Digby okay? They were with me. I think. I can’t –”

“They’re fine.” Yaz has had a lot of practice with sounding calm and reassuring, luckily, it’s easy this time. “A bit worried about you, but fine. They told us what they remember. I think they’re trying to escape tea at the moment.”

“Jack hates tea.” Jill rubs her face, looking like she’s about to cry. 

“But she seems okay with the biscuits.”

“Good.” The smile is definitely watery, but she’s tracking much more clearly. “I’m sorry. Ugh. I can’t – I have to apologize to them. I don’t know what I was thinking. We could’ve all been taken –”

“You’re all here. You can apologize to them if you want, but I’m not sure they’ll agree that you need to. I don’t think anyone could’ve expected what happened.” Carefully, “It doesn’t sound like you were entirely… yourself. When you showed it to them?”

Jill rubs her face again. “No, no it wasn’t just me by the end. I don’t think. Maybe. But I _did_ know. I knew it was dangerous. I think I knew it was dangerous…” She trails off, sounding confused, fear coming quick to catch up with the confusion. 

“What happened? The box was found in the woods…?”

“Yeah, Tyler found it. He thought it might be something alien, so he asked me to look at it.” There’s something that might be a shrug at the unspoken question. “I spent a few years in London, so I’m practically the campus expert on alien findings. I’m interested in the subject, too, I was even before actually experiencing some stuff. I don’t think he really thought it was alien. He just knows that I’m interested and since they found it in the woods – But it just looked like a box. Anyone could’ve dropped it or left it there for some reason. And then –” Jill breaks off, staring into the sky. 

“And then?” Yaz prompts, trying for gentle. 

“She _told_ me it was dangerous. She told me not to touch the box. But I didn’t think, I didn’t realize what she was talking about.”

“Who told you that?”

“This blond woman. She sounded English. But that was before Tyler even told me. She just showed up after class and told me that. And I didn’t even think that was strange… That should’ve been strange, right?”

“Was she wearing a shirt with a rainbow on it?”

“…I think so. I remember her jacket.”

* * *

“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Max asks.

“That means, ‘I don’t think this is a good idea’.” Nida says. “And I have to agree.”

The Doctor waves a hand, ignoring them both. “Straight to the source, that’s the ticket.”

Max looks at Nida, and then at the crackling portal. “Ticket to _where_.”

“Some form of hell, quite probably, so let’s get moving.”

The Doctor’s hand on his shoulder somehow fails to be reassuring in even the slightest bit. And that’s before she shoves him forward.


	12. cameo appearance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> in which people tell the truth, possibly

Almost six months ago, by Max’s fancy new watch, anyway, they’d had a run in with the Celestial Toymaker. They’d been watching the Intergalactic Song Contest (which O calls ‘space Eurovision for some reason) on the Time-Space Visualizer (which they all call space TV, for obvious reasons). Leo had been reading out interesting facts and Nida and O were debating best costumes, keeping the volume down because they thought Max was asleep. It had been a long day. 

Max hadn’t been asleep, exactly, it had been more a strange sort of waking-sleep where he had been aware of everything around him, but it had a sort of dreamlike quality. At any moment, he had been sure he could just sit up and join in, but at the same time it hadn’t seemed possible that it was really. Suddenly finding himself sprawled on a giant chessboard with mimes and people with outrageous French accents had been something of a trip. Honestly, it’s one of those adventures he’s still not entirely sure really happened. 

Being shoved through the crackling portal has something of the same feeling to it. Perhaps in part because of the strange manic scavenger hunt quality that had hung over their activities since the Doctor had landed them in the recent past. Trying to avoid crossing his own path, keep an eye on the Doctor, and figure out what they’re doing had been a lot to try to juggle at once. 

The light is wrong. Max has visited a lot of alien planets. Sometimes the light has been very different to what he’s used to. But he’s never had such an intense feeling that it was _wrong_ before. As he went through the crackling portal face first, he almost wonders if his eyes have been somehow damaged by the experience, but it’s everything. The light. The sound. The strange shapes around him, none of which are recognizable and certainly none of them the people he had been with only moments before. He’s alone. 

Max closes his eyes, trying to adjust instead of his immediate instinct to fail to ignore how _off_ everything feels. It’s a little like being unwater. It’s a little like being a corpse, trapped under the water, drifting in the current to bump against the underside of a ship to warn people of the dangers lurking, still aware – 

He opens his eyes. He still has one of the 24th century shock blankets folded in its not-foil package in a pocket of his vest. He wraps it around his shoulders. It helps hold in some of the heat he hadn’t realized was being leeched out of him. He’s cold, but the air doesn’t feel like it’s cold. It feels thick. He starts walking, trying to ignore the fear that the air would grow to heavy for him to move. Or breathe. 

Movement always makes Max feel better. He tries to remember the science behind that as he moves through the seemingly endless, unchanging, yet never the same, world. Planet? Dimension? He hasn’t been to a pocket dimension yet, maybe now he can put it on the list. And he isn’t actually alone. Noise doesn’t travel right, but he can definitely hear something different than the long hum/buzz that seems to be baseline here. 

It’s a relief to see the Doctor, which is probably a sign of how bad things are. She, of course, seems completely unaffected by the nature of wherever they are. And completely unintimidated by being surrounded by the crackling creatures. Being able to understand them probably helps. 

The Doctor pulls something out of her pocket. It looks like… modern art. “Does this add any weight to my argument?” The crackles intensify for several moments before the creatures – beings vanish. “Don’t worry, I can wait for an answer!” The Doctor shouts. But she doesn’t actually seem worried. 

“What’s going on?” Max asks. It would’ve been nice if she looked a little surprised at his popping up from behind one of the column things. 

“Hmm. So, they did decide to just let you wander around. There’s no telling some people. ‘People’ in this case being the Kasaavin. An interesting bunch. The Master ran into them, offered to help them in some plan for taking over the universe, but turned out to just want to use them for his own ends. Betrayal half-way through.” She shakes her head. “Lack of commitment, that’s his problem. It’s like I said to Marx, if you want to go far in show business, you have to commit to the bit. Not that he listened, so it was all economic theory and so on instead. Don’t look so worried, I haven’t offered my help instead.”

“What are you offering?” 

“Just their freedom.” She laughs a little, very much just to herself. “Since he apparently keeps doing this, at least the Master sets up some nasty backup for when whatever group he’s betrayed comes after him. They’re a touch wary, but I have a much better track record.” She tosses the weird sculpture up in the air again. “Interesting gravitational effect…” 

“Why am I here?” Max asks, pulling his blanket tighter around his shoulders.

“Well, they come from a realm beyond N-Space, so they can both reach multiple timelines and have a difficult time understanding them. A conduit is required. You won’t have to do anything more than just – exist. They’ll be able to read it all.” She tosses the statuette up again. “I’m sure you approve of helping bring cultures together.” 

“You don’t have to do this.” 

There might be regret in the Doctor’s expression, or maybe Max just can’t help hoping. “I’m afraid I do. There are far greater forces at work here, Maxwell. Sometimes, we have to move with the current.”

* * *

“Did they just _run off_ ,” the Master says, looking theatrically offended. The Master is always a touch theatrical, and the Doctor’s not surprised at all that that carries through to alternate versions. Especially ‘evil’ alternate versions. “Who _runs off_ in the middle of the conversation,” he practically declaims. 

“You hadn’t even explained your evil plan yet,” the Doctor agrees, shaking her head.

“ _Exactly!_ Who leaves before even finding out what the evil plan is? This is why you need a few extras around for targets; it’s not about the crowd but some artificial _shortages_ are sometimes the only thing that can stop some people from losing track of what they’re doing. This is just rude.”

“It’s probably the Doctor’s fault. The Master would never leave without hearing a full evil plan. But I’m sure you know what the Doctor’s like.”

The Master shakes his head, even more theatrically. “A bad influence. Just shameful, really.”

“I’m still here,” the Doctor does feel a need to point out. 

“Yes, but you’re just here to claim that you’ll work with me and then betray me or something like that. It’s just not the same.” She bets that he’s had a few regenerations who could manage a proper dramatic pout, but the sensation of their being something missing just lingers behind the showiness. 

“I hate to think that I’ve grown predictable.” The Doctor says, carrying on the act. They’ve all had times when they hit the note hollowly, whatever play this other Master and other Doctor are failing at is their own business. 

“You’re _always_ so predictable,” the Master spits back, having leapt to anger at the entire universe and especially the bits that look like her.

The Doctor sits down on a table, deciding not to join in changing the key. No reason to change up the recipe for the crash and complete failure of their attempts at a band now. 

“You know, you were my first friend. From the very beginning, I wanted you to like me as much as I liked you. I think it was something you said to Runcible. So long ago now, eh? But little details don’t matter so much. So clever. So funny. Looking for something more out of life than the same timeless path to meaningless positions that we were all supposed to want. I admired you. Sometimes I still do, a bit.”

The Master stares at her, angry in his uncertainty, and with some even deeper anger burning under that. A rage that cuts away at the dramatics, leaving his words clipped. “A different version of the same trick. Interesting.”

She shrugs. “Honestly, I just wanted to say it to your face, once. I’m never going to say it to _my_ you, obviously, and there’s no better stand in, is there?” She brushes back her hair. “We don’t want the same things, however much you want to think we do, but sometimes I wish we did. I wish it could be as easy as it seemed when we were kids. I wish that the history between us didn’t matter. I wish that one of us could have slightly less of an ego, though I’m not sure I would want it all as much if we weren’t both completely insufferable. Justifiably, though obviously more so in my case.”

“You –” He looks almost ready to actually attack her, but she’s used to ignoring that. 

“I know I don’t have to worry that you’ll ever tell _him_. And you’ve managed to make a pretty impressive statement to your Doctor. She seems to be upset about it, anyway. Lot of anger about the whole destroying Gallifrey thing after she’d done it first. I mean, that would be the bit that would get me angry, talk about lack of imagination. One Doctor on another, I only bring that up because I have more faith in you being able to think of something new than I do most Time Lords. Did.” 

“Are _you_ evil monologuing now?”

“I have as much right as you. And you gave up your turn.”

“I did not!”

“You did. You ceded the march. I told Caesar the exact same thing. Of course, he didn’t get it at the time, but I like to think he figured it out in the end. It really has been good to talk to you.”

The Doctor’s going to savor the look of complete confusion that she got in exchange for the hug for a long time. It almost makes up for not getting to see what face he makes when she jumps through the window, to busy heading for her TARDIS at a dead run to waste time looking back. 

He’s not _her_ version of the Master but screwing with his head is still good fun.

* * *

“Why?” The Master asks. Why does the Doctor have to ask? Why does it always have to come back to an edge of a fight? Why look for an answer that he doesn’t have?

“You know what we need to do to complete deactivate the Block,” the Doctor says. “Total shut down. I need to trust that you’ll wake me up again.”

He can translate the heavy-handed attempt at emotional manipulation, the endless need to know, no matter what it takes. But he doesn’t think it’s just that. He’s starting to read the variations in the depths of the furrow on her forehead. Or starting to read _into_ the furrow. At least he’s being deceived by a master (himself, obviously, for a frequent liar the Doctor’s skill can vary greatly). She wants to know; genuinely thinks she needs to know. 

“It’s not that the Doctor always travels alone,” he says, giving up. “But her traveling companions tend… not to last long.”

“They die.” She says, flatly. 

“They die.” There are so many reasons that people _should_ decide to stop traveling with the Doctor, but it’s almost always death. Sometimes the Doctor will come to him after, sometimes she’ll end up even further away. He can’t say which is worse. They don’t talk about it. He’s never asked if the Doctor blames him for it. He doesn’t ask if she remembers that first death, so long ago. 

The Doctor nods, unsurprised. 

“You share a love for a badly attempted, and badly timed, guilt trip with your other self. “Does that provide you with the answer for your damned question?”

“Not really,” she admits. “But I had to ask. I’m sorry.” He’s angry with her. He feels bad at the pain she’s hiding behind the careful distance. He wonders if this Doctor had left Gallifrey with anyone, if that’s a question she can’t bear to ask. Maybe it really is slightly pathetic. Maybe it’s just about having standards for how he treats people. And she has apologized.

Maybe there are none of the same silent accusations behind it, in her timeline. Maybe she doesn’t remember if there are. 

“Do you _trust_ me now?”

She tilts her head, assessing. “I rather think I do.” He meets her eyes, understanding exactly all the layers of meaning behind that one. 

“Let’s do this, then.” He stretches out a hand. After a moment, she takes it.

* * *

The Doctor looks around her personal land of the dead. It’s not so bad today, which is a good sign. Obviously, as they’re inside her head so the state of things is always a very literal metaphor for how she is. Though considering how much practice the Doctor has at not thinking about things and storing away feelings where the many, many people who try to break into her head can’t reach it, things have to be very bad for stuff to show signs of breaking down where anyone could see.

Well, now that she’s over her head on spikes phases, at least. That had been embarrassing when there’d been guests. Mid-regeneration cycle crisis, what can you do. Apart from try to never bring it up, avoid past selves and consciously try to ignore aesthetic choices that try to worm their way in. But that’s mostly in the hall of past selves, she’s always tried to treat her friends better than that. 

The Doctor remembers what she had told Victoria all those centuries ago. Back when he’d been so young, and Victoria had thought him so old. That his family slept in his mind. There’s so much else to think about, so many exciting things that need doing, most of the time they could sleep undisturbed, only brought back in front of his eyes when he really wanted to. She hopes it had helped Victoria. She’s never been entirely sure of how to help with human grief. And so often her friends try to be like her, or how they see her. She doesn’t know how to explain her own feelings, or maybe she just doesn’t want to. No matter how many times that means things end in accusations of not caring at all. It’s easier to put the memories away.

She remembers all of her friends, of course. And, technically (except for a few exceptions), they’re all dead (or not dead), really, due to the nature of time travel. But that’s another one on the list of things she says right before a grieving friend storms out of her life. She has her halls full of ghosts. All those closed up rooms that always end up back in the TARDIS, untouched. Those pictures that she doesn’t look at. And then there are the friends that died under her protection. Her failures, whose memories she still looks for reassurances. When she really can’t avoid it. 

The Doctor never visits on a truly good day, but she likes to imagine that they exist. If the shades of dead friends linger, they should at least have each other for company. Oh, there’s sure to be plenty of bickering, she can easily imaging River and Roz arguing and Lucie accusing C’rizz of moodiness and Sara could take everything too seriously (she was so young, most of them are so young, they’re all too young). But that’s part of what comes with strong personalities. She can think of even more reasons that they’d get along. Maybe enjoy a few rounds of darts or 51st century table tennis, hopefully not with the Doctor’s face on any target. 

She wants to believe that there’s usually something better than wandering through grey mist or endless labyrinths. She can just imagine how unimpressed they’d be at being stuck in that for eternity. They’d probably make their way up to share a lot more words if it was always screaming shades in the moment of death, consumed only by that. The Doctor like to think her imagination is slightly better than that, when not being forced through it by other’s hands. 

The grass crackles under her feet. Not a maze today, that’s something. She does trust that the Master will bring her back, but the moment of death can stretch out for a long time, locked inside your own mind, linked to a psychic weapon so you’ll die together. She doesn’t particularly want to be stuck in a maze. Not Gallifrey, either, another relief. The Doctor isn’t sure where to rate her greeter. 

“Adric?” The Doctor says.

“Yes, it’s me,” the boy says, folding his arms. “ _Sorry_ if you’d have _preferred_ someone else, but there aren’t always a lot of us down here, you know. Quantum uncertainty. And _some_ people have you going to take over an entire planet to try to save them, while others obviously don’t get a second look.”

“The Clara situation –” The Doctor rubs her head. “Adric, there’s no chance that you survived a spaceship hitting the Earth. It was a literal extinction event.”

“I’m very resilient.” 

“Yes, but there’s ‘resilient’ and then there’s impossible and that really isn’t the point. It _is_ good to see you.” 

“Right. It wasn’t even a _small_ spaceship. It wasn’t exactly a matter of split-second maneuvers and practically impossible timing.”

“Is this really what you want to talk about?”

Adric considers this the question seriously. “I think so, yes. It looms pretty large, you know. Like the Earth in the window. And I never get a chance to properly talk about it, you usually only show up when someone’s trying to attack you, and I can’t _complain_ then.” He grins at her, suddenly, a bright reminder of better adventures. “Besides, would you rather talk about working with the Master? You’re lucky that Nyssa isn’t here.” 

The Doctor winces. “You have a point.”

“I usually did. I tried to anyway. Even if people wouldn’t listen.” 

She pats his shoulder. “I know. But how about a game of chess instead?”

“Are you going to cheat?”

“Really, Adric, I _never_ cheat!” 

“That’s not what Romana said. Or K9. Or the book I found on how you’re supposed to play checkers…” 

“I may have occasionally reinterpreted the rules for a more interesting game –”

* * *

( _Not a hoax! Not a dream! Not an imaginary tale! This is for real!_

“That could go on every issue of my life since meeting you,” Izzy had said, once she’d let him out of her hug. The Doctor had laughed, pleased that his present had gone over well. He could never keep track of her comics.)

The truth is tricky. The Doctor remembers, but is memory the same as what actually happened to that child all those years ago? Does it even matter, anymore? Maybe. Perhaps the memory matters more. This is one truth, at least, an important one: 

The little boy cries himself to sleep, the day Torvic died. It’s not the first time, and it won’t be the last. He doesn’t cry for Torvic. He doesn’t even cry because a few hours before he had brought a rock down on Torvic’s head, feeling full of fierce, righteous anger until the other boy had fallen and that turned into something like shock. Once his friend was standing safe beside him, safe from the river, at least. 

He cries for a life almost lost, but it’s not Torvic’s or his friends, but his own dreams of the stars. At what could’ve been taken away from him, at what he fears still could be taken if anyone finds out. He hadn’t meant to kill him, but his thoughts that night linger bitterly on one last thing Torvic could end up costing him. They’re the same tears he had cried when Torvic had broken his experiment and the tutor had told him he should keep better track of his things if he wanted to come on the field trip, and certainly gain better control of his emotions. No proper Time Lord would allow such a shameful display. 

(The Doctor could laugh at that, thinking of all the Time Lords she’s known over the years. The Doctor supposes she does end regretting it, later. Once she’s old enough that Torvic just seems another child, trapped, as they all were. When she thinks about trying to protect a friend or deserving to fight back or anything else along those lines, there’s an edge of something defensive because it becomes the sort of thing that she feels needs an excuse.) 

That night, there was no guilt. No Torvic haunted his dreams of playing on a beach next to an endless ocean. It was a very different figure who entered the dream. 

A woman sat down next to the child. He had never seen her before, but she didn’t feel like a stranger. Under her blue gaze, he felt almost guilty for building a castle out of sand instead of doing something more productive. Even then he’d ignored that feeling, or maybe just turned it into a reason to jab an extra tall stick as a flag in the tower he was making instead. He didn’t know why he was surprised that her expression had been amused instead of holding any trace of disappointment. Her hair hadn’t blow in the breeze.

“You don’t belong,” he told her, puffing up more when she just laughs.

“That’s rather rude, child, as you were the one who invited me in.” She placed a shell at the gate of his castle. 

“I did not,” he had scoffed, “I would remember.”

She had laughed again. “Would you?” She had gone on before he had a chance to think of a proper answer to such an annoying response. “But I suppose you might not have realized at the time. You were rather busy hitting that dull little boy on the head with a rock.” She cupped a hand around her mouth, like she was another student, sharing a secret with him in class. “I didn’t like him either. Just the sort to end up one of my sister’s.”

When he’d looked, speechless, into her eyes he had realized that they were green now, not blue. He’d realized too that he knew exactly who she was. He had been scared. Of course, he had been scared. He knew Death. He knew that she was right, that he had invited her in and now there was nothing he could do. 

She had ruffled his hair. “Don’t look so worried. We could be good friends, you and me. Or, if you _really_ object to my company, well, maybe I’ll just go away. Some of us know not to linger where we’re not wanted. 

“You never just go away,” he had said, sure of that, just as he was sure of who she was, even though he’d swear it wasn’t until later that he’d end up looking up the old stories that spoke of her. There are things you just know, in dreams. 

“Never _just_ ,” she had agreed, “But there are special circumstances. After all, it wasn’t _your_ fault. He deserved it. He was hurting your friend. You didn’t mean it.” Even then, the child had suspected there was mockery behind that innocent tone. 

He had sat, hands clenching into futile fists, searching for an escape. “What do you want?”

She had shaken her head. “Oh, you Time Lords. You really do train up to not to be any fun at all. But if we must get to the point, you’re right, I do need to take someone. It’s a matter of balance, you understand. But maybe it doesn’t have to be you. After all, you didn’t kill him for your own sake, did you?”

The words had lingered in the air, an almost physical weight. The deal was laid out. The Doctor could claim that it was not one he could have truly understood. That he didn’t know what it meant. There’s truth to that. He didn’t know. But he knew it frightened him. He knew it was bad. He knew that she was a monster, and that you never make deals with monsters. He was still young enough to know there was truth in the old stories. He had wanted to run. Her eyes had cut into him, burning like the heart of the fire. He was just a child. He was afraid.

“Take him,” he had said, a whisper or maybe a shout. “Take him, not me.”

She had stood, suddenly towering over him, far too much for the figure of a woman she had appeared as to contain. Proportions had stretched and twisted, reality, even dream reality, not enough for him to be able to see her other form. She had thrown back her head – and laughed and laughed. When she had crouched down again, it was with the same face she’d worn before, though her smile had seemed slightly too big to fit the face she had claimed. 

“Sorry, sorry, my little joke. We do have to entertain ourselves somehow.”

“What do you mean?” Even as scared as he was, he had wanted to know. Maybe it had been because he was scared. 

“I’m afraid I wasn’t exactly honest. _truthful_ , but not very honest. It is a matter of balance and so on, but all of that was decided before I came by to say hello. Good effort on your part, but we ended up going best of thirteen, and it was far too narrow a victory to throw away just like that.” She winked at him. “But this is rather a day for learning how far your prepared to go, isn’t it? Sweet dreams, my champion, we’ll meet again.” 

He had been left alone, with only the sea for company. By the time he woke up, he had constructed the most magnificent sandcastle that anyone could dream of. 

Year later, the Master will talk about primitive ideas of damnation, and the Doctor will hear a familiar echo underneath his own laughter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Watching 'the Deadly Assassin' makes it very clear that the real reason the Doctor & Master didn't have any other friends in school is that they went on about each other insufferably
> 
> Also, three guess on who exactly Death showed up looking like.


End file.
